Serbia's war crimes prosecutor has launched a probe into the role of journalists in stoking war crimes during 1991-1995 wars in the former Yugoslavia, Reuters reported quoting an official on Monday. The Special War Crime Prosecutor's office plans to focus on links between war-mongering reporting and 1991-92 atrocities in the Croatian and Bosnian towns of Vukovar and Zvornik.
Some details from the Reuters report: [Link]
"We have found examples of war-mongering in the then media," Bruno Vekaric, spokesman for the Serbian war crimes prosecutor's office, told Reuters. "We now have war crime sentences ... we can now link causes (for crimes) and consequences."
In March, Serbia's war crimes court sentenced 13 former Serb paramilitaries for the 1991 massacre of 200 Croats at a pig farm near Croatia's eastern town of Vukovar. Last year the court also sentenced three former Serb paramilitaries for their role in the 1992 killings of 25 Muslims from the eastern Bosnian town of Zvornik.
During the outbreak of Yugoslav wars, a number of reporters, loyal to the now-defunct regime of late autocrat Slobodan Milosevic, were active in flamboyant reporting about events in Croatia and Bosnia. "We have found examples of war mongering ... our goal is to find sufficient evidence for indictments," Vekaric said.
Investigators will "have difficulties to prove intentional stoking of war crimes" in actual reports, he said. "Our key goal is to warn that such things must never repeat."
