Sarajevo, 30 October (AKI) – A top Bosnian court on Friday a sentenced former Bosnian Serb army officer Predrag Kujundzic to 22 years in jail for war crimes committed during Bosnia’s 1992-1992 civil war. These include forcible deportation, rape and the sexual enslavement of a 15-year-old Bosnian girl.

According to the indictment, Kujundzic, who was a commander of Bosnian Serb unit in the central Bosnian town of Doboj, participated in, encouraged, or failed to prevent rapes, persecution and the forceful resettlement of Muslims in the area.

The court took as a mitigating circumstance the fact that Kujundzic was a family man and hasn’t been sentenced before. But it cited as an aggravating circumstance the fact that an under-age Muslim girl was repeatedly raped by him.

The Hague-based United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is planning to close down by 2013 and has been turning over new cases to over to local courts.

The UN tribunal as charged 161 individuals and has sentenced over 60 people to over one thousand years in prison.

Earlier this month, a Bosnian court sentenced another Serb, Milorad Trbic, to 30 years for taking part in the massacre of up to 8,000 Muslim men and boys in the eastern town of Srebrenica in July 1995.

Bosnian Serb leaders have complained against alleged bias by the Bosnian courts, saying Serbs were being sentenced on an almost daily basis, while Muslims who committed crimes against Serbs were being spared.