PART I: Serbian war crimes

THE NIGHTMARE OF FOCA
12 year old girls were forced into sexual slavery

When the Bosnian town of Foca, south-east of Sarajevo was overrun by Bosnian Serb forces in April 1992,
it was the beginning of a horrific nightmare for its inhabitants.

Local Muslim men and women were rounded up and divided into separate camps, with many of the women
being detained in the sports hall, classrooms of the high school or taken to soldiers' own flats.

These were to become rape camps, where women suffered systematic violent and sexual attacks.

Women, including girls as young as 12 and 15, were forced into sexual slavery for the occupying soldiers.

Many women were so forcibly abused they suffered permanent gynecological harm. One woman, identified as witness 75, was raped for three hours by 15 men. Two teenage girls were held for months by Kovac as personal sex slaves before being sold.

Serb soldiers would drop by the Partizan Sports Hall to pick their victims from the 72 women, children and elderly people held there from July to August 1992.

One knife-wielding man threatened to gouge a 15-year-old victim with a crucifix, forced her to drink alcohol - an insult to her religion - and made her assume a Serb name as he raped her.

"I remember he was very forceful. He wanted to hurt me. But he could never hurt me as much as my soul was hurting me," she told the court.

Kunarac and Kovac, who received the stiffest sentences, kept young women and girls at the quarters as domestic servants and sex slaves.

Kunarac organised the transfer of women to other soldiers, while Kovac raped, beat and subsequently sold his charges, including a 12-year old girl.

'A closed dark place'

When the Serbs entered the town, around half of Foca's 40,000 inhabitants were Muslims.

After the war, few were left and the town was renamed Srbnje. It remains, said a Human Rights Watch
report, a "closed dark place".
Rape was widespread during the Bosnian war and seen as one of the tools of ethnic cleansing.
Tens of thousands of people, mainly Muslim women and girls, are believed to have been sexually
attacked during the war which lasted from 1992-1995.

Fear of rape caused Muslim families to flee from the advancing Serbs, while rape also forced Muslim
women to have Serbs' babies.