Milan Lukic guilty of massacring Muslims in Bosnian war during reign of terror under Radovan Karadzic

One of the most notorious Serbian mass murderers and paramilitary chiefs from the war in Bosnia was sentenced to life in prison today, 17 years after he helped turn the ancient town of Visegrad in eastern Bosnia into a morgue for Muslims.

Milan Lukic, whose career has included organised crime, drug rackets, involvement in the protection networks of Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and years on the run in Latin America, was found guilty of murder and crimes against humanity by the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

He was sentenced to life for six separate incidents of war crimes, entailing murder, extermination, cruelty, persecution and inhumane acts. His cousin and co-defendant, Sredoje Lukic, received 30 years.

From the start of the Bosnian war in 1992, Milan Lukic gained a particularly grim reputation as a sadistic warlord in and around the Muslim-majority town of Viˇsegrad on the river Drina near the border with Serbia.

He led the paramilitary band known as the White Eagles, which, under licence from Belgrade and the Serbian security services, unleashed a reign of terror, mass murder and ethnic cleansing

Within months of the war starting, the Muslims of Visegrad were either dead or had fled.

They were packed into houses that were then torched, with Lukic lingering outside to shoot any who tried to escape. The victims included newborn babies. Other victims were lined up on the banks of the Drina river and executed, or they were shot on the famous old Ottoman bridge spanning the Drina at Visegrad and the corpses were dumped in the river.

Women and girls were held in rape camps. Victims complained that Lukic was not charged with rape.

He was sentenced for the murder of more than 120 civilians – women, children and elderly people – in two incidents in which the detainees were jammed into the room of a house which was then set alight.

Presiding judge Patrick Robinson said: “These horrific events stand out for the viciousness of the incendiary attack, for the obvious premeditation and calculation that defined it, for the sheer callousness and brutality of herding, trapping and locking the victims in the two houses, thereby rendering them helpless in the ensuing inferno, and for the degree of pain and suffering inflicted on the victims as they were burnt alive.

“In the all too long, sad and wretched history of man’s inhumanity to man, the Pionirska Street and Bikavac fires must rank high.”

Lukic was also found guilty of executing 12 male civilians in two incidents and of shooting a woman dead at point-blank range. Robinson characterised Lukic’s crimes as displaying a “callous and vicious disregard for human life”.

The trial is likely to be the last at the tribunal dealing with perpetrators directly engaged in murder.

Lukic’s murders of at least 133 civilians all occurred within a three-week-period in June 1992. After the war, Lukic operated with impunity, running organised crime networks and rackets involved with the protection of Karadzic, finally captured in Belgrade last year. Lukic enjoyed the protection of the Serbian police despite being indicted for war crimes 11 years ago.

In 2003, he fled to Latin America and was arrested in Buenos Aires in 2005.