Four Serb paramilitaries caught on video gunning down Bosnian Muslims near Srebrenica in 1995 were today convicted of war crimes against civilians by Serbia's War Crimes Court.
It was the first court ruling in Serbia related to the systematic killings of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in the final months of the 1992-95 war in Bosnia - Europe's worst atrocity since the Second World War.
Trials of Serbs in Serbia have only become possible since former president Slobodan Milosevic was ousted in 2000. The Srebrenica case has been a key test of the ability of Serbia's judiciary to deal with war-time atrocities.
The four Serbs found guilty today were seen in a video that surfaced in June 2005 when it was shown at the war crimes trial of Milosevic before the UN tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.
The video shows members of a notorious Serbia paramilitary unit known as the Scorpions.
The footage, recorded by a Scorpions member who apparently believed it would never become public, showed the men taking Bosnian Muslim civilians from a truck with their hands tied and lining them up on a hillside before spraying them with machine gun fire.
The unit's commander, Slobodan Medic, and a fellow paramilitary were each sentenced to 20 years in prison, while the only defendant who admitted to shooting the victims, Pero Petrasevic, was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Another Scorpions member, accused as an accomplice, was sentenced to five years in jail, while a fifth was cleared.
PA