Nine people charged over the Srebrenica massacre in Bosnia 10 years ago will appear together in the biggest trial yet before the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, the court said Thursday.
The court said it had accepted the request of chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte to lump together the cases of the Bosnian Serb military officers accused, eight of whom are in the court's custody.
Some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed when Bosnian Serb forces - which the UN court says were backed by the Belgrade regime of Slobodan Milosevic - overran the UN-protected enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995, near the end of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war.
Considered the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II, the massacre is the only episode in the Bosnian war that has been classified as genocide by the UN court.
The killings have led to genocide charges against many suspects including Milosevic, former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic and his military commander, Ratko Mladic.
Karadzic and Mladic, seen as two of the principal architects of the Serb wartime strategy of "ethnic cleansing," remain at large, while Milosevic is on trial in The Hague on charges including genocide related to Srebrenica.
In the joint trial, which is not expected to start until 2006, Bosnian Serb officers Vujadin Popovic, Ljubisa Beara, Drago Nikolic, Ljubomir Borovcanin and Vinko Pandurevic, will face charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Radivoje Miletic, Milan Gvero and Milorad Trbic will face war crimes and crimes against humanity charges, but not genocide. The ninth man, Zdravko Tolimir, also charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity, is still on the run but has pledged to surrender.
The complicated trial will have to overcome a string of technical problems such as how to make room for nine suspects and their 18 lawyers. So far the biggest case before the court has involved only six defendants.
It is expected that a new courtroom will have to be built to accommodate the Srebrenica case.
The prosecution said they requested a joint trial because it would save time and be easier on witnesses, including survivors, who would avoid giving repeated testimonies about the horrors they endured.
Some of the accused objected that it would extend the length of the trial for each suspect, but the judges swept their arguments aside.
"In sum, the trial chamber believes a single trial, by avoiding the duplication of evidence, promoting judicial economy, safeguarding the rights and availability of witnesses and ensuring consistency of the verdicts will better protect the interests of justice," they said in a ruling.
The tribunal is trying to save time as it wants to finish trials in the lower courts by 2008 and appeals by 2010 when the court is set to close.
It is already trying to refer lower level cases to courts in former Yugoslav republics such as Bosnia and Croatia.
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