Bosnian Serb wartime minister Momcilo Mandic pleaded not guilty today to charges of war crimes committed against Muslim and Croat civilians in central and eastern Bosnia during the 1992-95 war.
Bosnia's war crimes chamber accused Mandic of having led an attack by the Bosnian Serb forces on the police training centre in Sarajevo in April 1992, when he served as an assistant to the interior minister of the then self-styled Serb Republic.
Mandic is also charged with responsibility for the persecution and torture of non-Serbs in detention camps around Sarajevo and in the eastern town of Foca from May to December 1992 when at least a dozen people were killed or went missing.
At that time, he served as the Serb Republic justice minister and, according to the indictment, planned, ordered and committed persecutions of non-Serb civilians by killing, inhuman treatment, beating, illegal detention and forced labour.
"I plead not guilty on all counts," Mandic, a lawyer by training, told a preliminary hearing before judge Shireen Avis Fisher.
The court had earlier charged Mandic and three other top Bosnian Serb officials with corruption that led to the bankruptcy of his bank in the Serb part of Sarajevo, after depositors' funds were transferred to political party accounts. He also pleaded not guilty to the corruption charge.
Some funds are believed to have gone to finance the support network of Karadzic, who is indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal for genocide over the Srebrenica massacre of 8,000 Muslims in 1995 and the 43-month siege of Sarajevo.
Mandic left Bosnia towards the end of the war and moved to Belgrade where he became a wealthy businessman. He was arrested last August in Montenegro and transferred to Bosnia where he has been detained since.