'Girls as young as 12 became sex slaves in Bosnia'
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Your support makes all the difference.Three Bosnian Serbs went on trial yesterday accused of running camps where Muslims as young as 12 were held captive and gang-raped during the Bosnian war.
The hearing is the first attempt by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to treat rape and sexual enslavement as a crime against humanity and a weapon of ethnic cleansing.
"This is a case about the women and girls - some as young as 12 or 15 - who endured unimaginable horrors as their worlds collapsed around them," said the prosecutor, Dirk Ryneveld. Scores of women at Foca in south-east Bosnia were "brutalised and dehumanised" by their captors in an organised sexual rampage, he said.
On trial are Dragoljub Kunarac, commander of a special reconnaissance unit of the Bosnian Serb army, Radomir Kovac, a military police sub-commander and paramilitary leader, and Zoran Vukovic, a former waiter and military police sub-commander.
They deny 33 counts, including 15 crimes against humanity and 18 violations of the laws or customs of war, and face life imprisonment. The case crosses a new legal threshold.
Rape has been included in previous tribunal cases, but as a violation of the laws and customs of war, rather than a crime against humanity. The inclusion of sexual enslavement is also new.
From 13 July 1992, Bosnian women were held in rape camps at the Foca High School or the town's Partizan Sports Hall. Armed soldiers, mostly in groups of five, would take women from the hall to be raped or sexually abused.
Prosecutors say over one fortnight, a 15-year-old and a 16-year-old were among the women raped or sexually abused almost every night. One was seven months pregnant. The indictment says Kunarac took two women to his headquarters, and raped one. The other was raped by 15 soldiers.
The woman and a 12-year-old were kept in Kovac's flat,sexually assaulted and forced to dance naked on a table, said the prosecutor. The 12-year-old was sold to a soldier for 200 Deutschmarks (£65).
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