BOSNIAN SERB TRIED BY GERMAN COURT FOR GENOCIDE

ZAGREB, Jan 4 (Hina) - A Bosnian Serb is being tried for genocide, murder, and rape committed in Bosnia in 1992 at a court in Duesseldorf, the State Attorney's Office in Karlsruhe told Hina in a statement on Monday. A trial against Maksim Sokolovic began on May 14, 1998, the statement said, adding when the main trial would end could at present not be envisaged. The Karlsruhe State Attorney accused Sokolovic before the Duesseldorf court of taking part, as a military unit commander, in the extermination of Bosnian Moslems in Kalesija, an area near Tuzla, north-eastern Bosnia, in May 1992. According to the indictment, Sokolovic took part in the deportation of Moslems to a concentration camp. On May 28, 1992 he pulled a prisoner out of a bus at a checkpoint and subsequently shot him. Sokolovic is also charged with arresting the same day a Moslem woman, taking her to a hearing, and then raping her. The same woman was in June 1992 twice raped by several soldiers under Sokolovic's command. When she tried to run, the soldiers shot her through the left leg. Sokolovic has lived in Germany since 1969. He has been in detention since his arrest in 1996. (hina) ha