• Winter storm strands thousands of motorists overnight in eastern Europe

    Szilard Gergely / AFP - Getty Images

    A man walks past a damaged truck at the site of an accident on the E71 motorway, near the Croatian, Slovenian and Hungarian borders on Friday, a day after a heavy snow storm hit the area.

    By Krisztina Than, Reuters

    BUDAPEST - Hungary deployed tanks to reach thousands of motorists trapped in heavy snow on Friday as a sudden cold snap and high winds struck parts of the Balkans, Slovakia and Poland, leaving at least two people dead.

    Snow stranded people in cars, buses and trains through the night and conspired with strong winds to cut off dozens of towns and villages in Hungary.

    "The situation is most critical on the M1 motorway (linking Budapest and Vienna) where hundreds of cars are stranded in the snow, most of them for 18-20 hours now," said Marton Hajdu, spokesman for the National Directorate for Disaster Management.

    Reuters photographer traveling with a rescue convoy said high winds had caused snowdrifts on the motorway up to three feet high.

    People took to Facebook to appeal for help.

    "At the Gyorszentivan exit on the motorway I have friends stranded since yesterday evening," wrote Ibolya Csukovics. "Can anyone help? They've run out of food and drink."

    The government said it had sent in tanks and other military vehicles with caterpillar tracks.

    The weekend's premier league and second tier football fixtures were canceled, with night-time temperatures expected to drop as low as 5 degrees Fahrenheit).

    After a relatively mild winter for much of the region, almost 200,000 people in Hungary, Bulgaria and Slovakia were left shivering without electricity on Friday. Heavy rain hit parts of Serbia and Bosnia.

    In Bulgaria, one woman was killed when scaffolding collapsed in high winds in the central town of Gabrovo, and a school was evacuated in the southern town of Krichim when wind tore off the roof.

    To the south, in Kosovo, a 10-year-old girl drowned when a river burst its banks in heavy rain in the northern town of Skenderaj. Dozens of homes were flooded in the west of the country, a Reuters reporter said.

    "The situation is alarming," Klina municipality spokeswoman Samije Gjergjaj told Reuters. She said some 300 people were stranded by floodwater.

    "There's just one small boat evacuating these people," said Gjergjaj. "We're waiting for the state emergency services to help out."

    Heavy snow also paralyzed parts of southeastern Poland, where police banned heavy lorries from entering the city of Rzeszow for fear they would get stuck.

    In eastern Slovakia, snow stranded some 40 lorries on a highway in the High Tatras region. The army deployed hundreds of soldiers to help out and authorities appealed to people to avoid venturing out by car. 

    Alexey Gromov / AFP - Getty Images

    People struggle against wind and drifting snow in the Belarus capital, Minsk, on Friday.

    Copyright 2013 Thomson Reuters. Click for restrictions.

  • 35,000 rapes, a handful of prosecutions: Bosnia war victims seek justice

    By Reuters

    TUZLA, Bosnia -- Fika was 15 years old, and her sister 17, when they were captured and repeatedly raped by Bosnian Serb soldiers who swept through eastern Bosnia early in the country's 1992-95 war.

    "We were forced to watch each other being raped, and I still feel my pain and the pain of my sister," she said. "They wanted us to admit we were spies, so they beat us till they knocked out our teeth."

    Twenty years on, Fika is among thousands of Bosnian Muslim women whose search for recognition and support from the Bosnian state is being blocked by Bosnian Serb leaders who fear a wave of compensation claims. Her sister died at the hands of their torturers.

    Rights groups are losing patience, warning that the psychological toll is only getting worse with time.

    "The silence surrounding the wartime rape of women in the Serb Republic ... is deafening," Amnesty International wrote in October.

    Fewer than 40 rape cases have been prosecuted in the 17 years since the war ended, and legislation at the state level to extend compensation and rehabilitation rights to rape victims of the war is gathering dust.

    On the 17th anniversary of Europe's worst massacre since World War II, Muslims in Bosnia attended funeral services for 520 newly identified victims. Msnbc.com's Dara Brown reports.

    The lesson of Bosnia has spurred a push by Britain to raise awareness of sexual violence in war when it takes over the chairmanship of the G8 group of nations next year.

    'Butcher of Bosnia' Ratko Mladic goes on trial over slaughter at Srebrenica

    The British government plans to send police officers, lawyers, psychologists and forensic experts to Bosnia and other conflict and post-conflict countries to work with local authorities.

    A delicate balance of Muslims, Serbs and Croats, Bosnia was torn apart as federal Yugoslavia dissolved. An estimated 100,000 people died, most of them Muslims. Some estimates put the number of women raped at up to 35,000, again the majority of them Muslims.


    With peace, the country was split into two autonomous regions - the Serb Republic and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, home to mainly Muslims and Croats. The country is ruled by a system of ethnic quotas, with each region enjoying a high level of autonomy and the central state often left powerless to legislate over the entire territory.

    The story of Fika, as she asked to be called, is indicative. She declined to give her real name, fearing the stigma attached to many wartime rape victims in Bosnia. Reuters reached her through a non-governmental organization that helps rape victims.

    Caught up in a wave of ethnic cleansing of Muslims from eastern Bosnia, Fika was captured and held at a Serb-run detention camp in the town of Vlasenica. She says she lost count of how many times she was raped by her captors.

    Finally released, Fika fled to the northern town of Tuzla, now part of the Federation, dropped out of school and struggled to support her mother and younger sister.

    Fifteen years ago Tuesday, a peace treaty negotiated by Ambassador Richard Holbrooke was signed, ending the war in Bosnia. NBC's Brian Williams reports.

    Horrors of Srebrenica massacre set out at Mladic trial

    Now 34 and a mother, she has not told her three children what happened to her, nor will she return to her home in Vlasenica, which is now part of the Serb Republic and where she believes her rapists still live.

    Three years ago, spurred by recurring nightmares, she raised the courage to report two of them to police in the region, but charges were never brought.

    She has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and receives $330 per month from the Muslim-Croat Federation as compensation.

    Those like her who live in the Serb Republic receive nothing, however, because the law there only recognizes those who can prove damage to at least 60 percent of their body as civilian victims of war, disregarding psychological trauma.

    'Line of blood': 11,541 red chairs symbolize victims of siege of Sarajevo

    Fika told her husband what happened to her, but says she regrets doing so because of the toll it has taken on their marriage.

    "I have no idea what keeps me going," Fika said. "My heart is rotten."

    "For me, the war never ended. And it never will,” she added.

    At least three unsuccessful bids have been made in recent years to enshrine the rights of wartime rape victims in state law. Bosnian Muslims accuse the Serb Republic of blocking their efforts.

    Srebrenica: The story that will never end

    Amnesty International said the Serb Republic "is still failing to acknowledge the needs of wartime rape survivors - indeed, the existence of a problem at all."

    Bosnian Serb War Invalids Minister Petar Djokic said his government was exploring ways to resolve the issue.

    "We have already discussed this with some non-governmental organizations dealing with this problem to see how we can resolve this institutionally in the best way," Djokic told Reuters, "without creating another problem for ourselves through any attempted abuse of the social support system.”

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  • Ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic acquitted of one genocide count

    By msnbc.com news services

    Judges in The Hague acquitted Radovan Karadzic of one count of genocide on Thursday, but left 10 other war crimes and genocide charges standing against the former Bosnian Serb leader. 

    Judges said prosecutors had not presented enough evidence to support the genocide count covering mass killings, expulsions and persecution by Serb forces of Muslims and Croats from Bosnian towns early in the country's 1992-95 war.

    However, they rejected defense motions to dismiss 10 other charges that included the 1995 killing of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica, Europe's worst massacre since World War II. 

    Valerie Kuypers / AFP - Getty Images, file

    Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic appears in a courtroom in The Hague on August 29, 2008.

    Karadzic was leader of the Bosnian Serb government during the three-year war that raged in Bosnia from 1992 after the break-up of Yugoslavia. 

    He was indicted for war crimes and genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in 1995 and brought to The Hague 13 years later. His trial, under way since 2009, continues later this year with the opening of his defense case. 

    Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • Teenager allegedly held as slave in Bosnia for years

    EPA

    An undated picture shows the house where a girl is alleged to have spent years in slavery in the Bosnian village of Karavlasi.

    By NBC News, msnbc.com and news services

    KARAVLASI, Bosnia - A 19-year-old German woman was recovering in a safe house in Bosnia Tuesday after allegedly being enslaved and abused by her stepfather and his partner for nearly eight years.

    The teenager was allegedly treated like a slave, often beaten, forced to sleep and eat with pigs, and even had to pull her captors around in a horse cart, according to reports by neighbors in Karavlasi, a small Bosnian farming village.

    Milenko Marinkovic, 52, who was once married to the teen's mother, and his wife Slavojka, 45, have been detained on suspicion of treating the young woman in an inhumane way, "forbidding her any contacts with people, forbidding her to attend school," a spokesman for the prosecution in Tuzla Damir Arnautovic told Reuters.


    The teen's stepfather also allegedly set dogs on her repeatedly. Neighbors reported seeing the girl sadistically forced to pull a horse cart for distances between 1,300 to 1,600 feet while being whipped for the apparent amusement of her tormentors. 

    The young woman was disoriented and bore visible injuries after authorities found her on May 17, after a tip-off from a neighbor, officials said. The neighbor told police that the teen was covered in bruises and scars.

    Bosnian prosecutors said the young woman was believed to have been brought to northern Bosnia by her German mother. The mother still lives in the hamlet and told reporters who approached her to go away, NBC News reported.

    Reuters contributed to this report.

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  • Horrors of Srebrenica massacre set out at Mladic trial

    The war crimes trial of Bosnian Serb ex-army chief Ratko Mladic has been postponed because prosecutors failed to disclose some evidence to the defense. ITV's Bill Neely reports.

    By msnbc.com news services

    THE HAGUE, Netherlands - Prosecutors in the genocide trial of Serb general Ratko Mladic on Thursday described five days of terror in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995, when troops under his command massacred more than 7,000 unarmed Muslim boys and men.

    Mladic, 70, sat listening with his back to the public after being warned at the start of his trial on Wednesday for making a throat-slitting gesture to a relative of Srebrenica victims.

    The massacre, Europe's worst atrocity since World War Two, helped finally to galvanize Western powers into launching air strikes on Serb forces to bring the 1992-95 Bosnian war to an end.

    "This was and will remain genocide," said prosecutor Peter McCloskey, showing grainy video footage of bodies outside a warehouse where about 1,000 prisoners were gunned down.

    "The evidence of this crime is overwhelming ... We will focus on linking General Mladic and his men to the crime."

    Mladic is accused of commanding Bosnian Serb troops who waged a campaign of murder and persecution to drive Muslims and Croats out of territory they considered part of Serbia. His troops rained shells and snipers' bullets down on civilians in the 44-month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo.

    However, there was a blow for efforts to ensure that the trial of Mladic, whose lawyers say he has had three strokes and a heart attack, does not parallel that of Slobodan Milosevic, which lasted so long that he died before a verdict was reached.

    Srebrenica: The story that will never end

    The judges accepted a defense argument that prosecutors had not disclosed their case properly, but did not say if they would grant the full six-month delay requested by the lawyers before the trial enters its next stage, where evidence is presented.

    Presiding judge Alphons Orie said judges will analyze the "scope and full impact" of the error and aim to establish a new starting date "as soon as possible." The presentation of evidence was supposed to begin later this month.

    Mladic looks frail and thin compared to the stocky commander seen in wartime barking orders to shell Bosnian Muslim positions, but has benefited visibly from the medical treatment he has received while in detention.

    McCloskey said prosecutors planned to call scores of witnesses, including 11 survivors of the massacre as well as executioners from the Bosnian Serb army.

    "In only five days, forces of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic expelled the population from Srebrenica and Zepa and murdered more than 7,000 Muslim men and boys."

    He said nearly 6,000 bodies had been exhumed from mass graves and secondary sites where bodies were reburied to conceal them in remote mountain areas. Their remains have been identified by DNA testing.

    In the public area, mothers of Srebrenica victims wept as they listened to the proceedings.

    "My husband was 45 years old. He was taken away and killed only because he had a different name and different religion," said Zumra Sahomerovic.

    "There is no punishment good enough for him (Mladic)."

    Slideshow: The charges against Ratko Mladic

    Serge Ligtenberg / Getty Images

    A career soldier, Mladic stands accused of orchestrating the siege of Sarajevo and the slaughter of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica.

    Launch slideshow

    The prosecution says the massacre was part of a strategic plan, devised with Milosevic, then Serbian president, and Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, to "cleanse" parts of the Balkans of non-Serbs and create a pure Serb state.

    Among the 11 charges against Mladic are genocide, murder, rape, imprisonment and acts of terror for actions that also include the 43-month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo, in which 10,000 died, and the establishment of a number of brutal prison camps.

    Like Karadzic, who is also on trial in The Hague, Mladic faces a sentence of up to life imprisonment if found guilty.

    Both were indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia at the end of the Bosnian war in 1995, but remained free in Serbia for more than a decade before being tracked down. 

    Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • 'Butcher of Bosnia' Ratko Mladic goes on trial over slaughter at Srebrenica

    Toussaint Kluiters / Pool via Reuters

    Former Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic sits in a courtroom in The Hague on Wednesday as his trial opens. Mladic, 70, faces 11 overall counts for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    By msnbc.com news services

    Updated at 4:57 a.m.: THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic went on trial for genocide on Wednesday, accused of leading the slaughter of 8,000 unarmed Muslim boys and men in Srebrenica in 1995, Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.

    The ailing 70-year-old Mladic's appearance at the U.N. tribunal for the former Yugoslavia marks the end of a long wait for justice to survivors of the 1992-95 war that left some 100,000 people dead. He is accused of 11 charges of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.

    Mladic, in a suit and tie and looking healthier than at previous pretrial hearings, gave a thumbs-up and clapped to supporters in the court's public gallery as the trial got under way. He occasionally wrote notes and showed no emotion as prosecutors began outlining his alleged crimes.

    One woman in the public gallery called him a "vulture" as prosecutors began two days of laying out their case for judges.


    Presiding Judge Alphons Orie of the Netherlands said at the outset that the court was considering postponing the presentation of evidence, due to start May 29, due to "errors" by prosecutors in disclosing evidence to the defense. Prosecutor Dermot Groome said he would not oppose a "reasonable adjournment."

    Mladic allegedly orchestrated not only the week-long massacre in Srebrenica, at the time a U.N. "safe haven", but also the 43-month siege of Sarajevo, in which more than 10,000 people were killed by snipers, machineguns and heavy artillery.

    Munira Subasic, who lost 22 family members in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, was among a group of relatives of war dead heading into the courtroom to face Mladic.

    The 65-year-old said she wanted to look him in the eye "and ask him if he will repent for what he did."

    'Murderer!'
    Mladic, who was arrested last May after 16 years on the run, has dismissed the charges as "monstrous" and says he is too ill to stand trial. The court entered a "not guilty" plea on his behalf.

    The case has inevitably stirred up violent emotions in the Balkans. Survivors watching proceedings from the court gallery have shouted "Murderer!" and "Killer!" at a man nicknamed the "Butcher of Bosnia."

    Slideshow: The charges against Ratko Mladic

    Serge Ligtenberg / Getty Images

    A career soldier, Mladic stands accused of orchestrating the siege of Sarajevo and the slaughter of 8,000 Muslims in Srebrenica.

    Launch slideshow

    For his part, Mladic has been angry and defiant during pre-trial hearings, heckling the judge, shouting and interrupting the proceedings.

    "The whole world knows who I am," he told a hearing last year. "I am General Ratko Mladic. I defended my people, my country ... now I am defending myself."

    Mladic was in charge of the Bosnian Serb army when, over several days in July 1995, Serb fighters overran the Srebrenica enclave in eastern Bosnia, theoretically under the protection of Dutch U.N. peacekeepers.

    Srebrenica: The story that will never end

    Video footage shot at the time showed Mladic mingling with Muslim prisoners.

    Shortly afterwards, the men and boys were separated from the women, stripped of identification, and shot.

    The dead were bulldozed into mass graves, then later dug up with excavators and hauled away in trucks to be better hidden from the world, in dozens of remote mass graves.

    War crimes suspect Ratko Mladic made his first appearance before a war crimes tribunal at The Hague. He called the charges against him "obnoxious" and told the court he was "too ill" to face trial. ITN's Bill Neely reports.

    Prosecutors say Mladic was part of a "joint criminal enterprise to eliminate the Bosnian Muslims in Srebrenica by killing the men and boys ... and forcibly removing the women, young children and some elderly men".

    Mladic is also held responsible for the siege and bombardment of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo, which prosecutors said was intended to "spread terror among the civilian population."

    The horrors of the siege, together with the Srebrenica massacre, eventually galvanized world opinion in support of the campaign of Western airstrikes on Bosnian Serb targets that brought the conflict to an end shortly after.

    Mladic was indicted in 1995 along with Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serbs' political leader.

    Serbian war crimes fugitive Ratko Mladic has been arrested. He was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for orchestrating the Srebrenica massacre. He is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and violations of the laws of war. ITN's Paul Davies reports.

    Yet both remained free in Serbia for more than a decade before being tracked down and sent to The Hague. Karadzic's trial is already under way.

    Defense lawyers say they have not had enough time to review the huge case file prepared by prosecutors and asked for the trial to be postponed, but the request was denied.

    411 witnesses
    Serge Brammertz, the court's chief prosecutor, has dismissed Mladic's assertion that he is too frail to sit through a 200-hour prosecution case involving testimony from 411 witnesses.

    His appearance in The Hague is testament to the work of the tribunal, which has defied skeptics by managing, in the course of 19 years, to arrest all its 161 indictees.

    But some victims still fear that Mladic, who has received physical therapy for a possible stroke, could escape judgment by dying in mid-trial.

    Mladic's mentor, former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, the architect of the Balkan wars, died in detention in 2006, a few months before a verdict in his trial for genocide and other war crimes in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo.

    Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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  • 'Line of blood': 11,541 red chairs symbolize the victims of the siege of Sarajevo

    Amel Emric / AP

    Red chairs are displayed along a main street in Sarajevo as the city marks the 20th anniversary of the start of the Bosnian war on April 6, 2012.

    Reuters reports from Sarajevo — With a line of 11,541 red chairs, one for each victim of the siege of Sarajevo, Bosnia on Friday remembered when war broke out 20 years ago and the West dithered in the face of the worst atrocities in Europe since World War Two.

    The anniversary finds the Balkan country still deeply divided, power shared between Serbs, Croats and Muslims in a single state ruled by ethnic quotas and united by the weakest of central governments.

    Amel Emric / AP

    City officials have lined up 11,541 red chairs arranged in 825 rows along the main street that now looks like a red river representing the 11,541 Sarajevans who were killed during the siege.

    "The Sarajevo Red Line is in fact the line of blood that ran down the streets of Sarajevo from April 6, 1992 until 1995," Sarajevo mayor Alija Behmen said of the long line of chairs through the center of the capital.

    On Thursday, cellist Vedran Smailovic, who became an icon of artistic defiance when he played on a central Sarajevo street as the city was shelled, played again for the first time in his hometown since he left in 1993. Read the full story.

    Anja Niedringhaus / AP

    Cellist Vedran Smajlovic addresses the auditorium before playing at one of the ceremonies being held to mark the 20th anniversary of the start of the siege of Sarajevo, on April 5, 2012.

    Amel Emric / AP

     

  • Cheering crowd greets release of Bosnian war criminal Fikret Abdic

    Hrvoje Polan / AFP - Getty Images

    A crowd holds a statue of Fikret Abdic during his welcome ceremony in front of the prison in Pula, Croatia on March 9, 2012. Abdic, a former Bosnian warlord who fought fellow Muslims during his country's 1992-95 war, was released from prison on Friday after serving two-thirds of his war crimes sentence.

    A former Bosnian warlord who fought fellow Muslims during his country's 1992-95 war was released from prison on Friday after serving two-thirds of his war crimes sentence, The Associated Press reports.

    Fikret Abdic, once one of the richest men in Bosnia and a popular politician, was convicted in 2003 for participating in the detention and killing of fellow Muslims during the war. About 3,000 cheering followers gathered to welcome his release. Read the full story.

    Nikola Solic / AP

    Fikret Abdic, center, greets his family members upon his release from prison on March 9, 2012.