A leading Bosnian Serb, Gen Stanislav Galic (58), yesterday appeared before the UN tribunal in The Hague in the first war crimes trial related to the 44-month siege of Sarajevo, in which around 12,000 people were killed.
The general faces charges of crimes against humanity and war crimes for ordering the sniping and shelling of civilians during the siege. Bosnian Serb forces - which were under Gen Galic's command from September 1992 until August 1994 - besieged the capital of Bosnia-Herzegovina for nearly four years, terrorising citizens and making everyday life nearly impossible.
In May 1993, the UN declared Sarajevo a safe-zone under UN protection, but the shelling from the surrounding mountains continued. The images of inhabitants of Sarajevo, besieged, starved and randomly targeted by snipers - with UN soldiers in the city powerless to stop the assault - shocked the world.
The indictment accuses Gen Galic's troops of directing "shelling and sniping at civilians who were tending vegetable plots, queuing for bread, collecting water, attending funerals, shopping in markets, riding on trams, gathering wood, or simply walking with their children and friends". Some were injured and killed in their homes as soldiers shot through the windows.
One of the worst incidents while he was leading the Romanija Corps of the Bosnian Serb army was when a mortar shell hit a crowded market in February 1994, killing 66 people and wounding over 140.