'Monster of Grbavica' gets 45 yrs

Veselin Vlahovic, a former Bosnian Serb paramilitary dubbed the "Monster of Grbavica", was jailed for 45 years yesterday for inflicting a reign of terror on Sarajevo civilians during the 1992-95 war.
"During systematic repression against the non-Serb population he participated in expulsion of his victims, he committed murders, he tortured, raped and imprisoned his victims," judge Zoran Bozic said at the sentencing in a packed Sarajevo courtroom.
The sentence against Vlahovic, a Montenegrin, is the most severe delivered for war crimes by a Bosnian court.
Vlahovic, sentenced on all 60 counts in his indictment, committed the crimes between May and July 1992, in three Sarajevo neighbourhoods controlled by Serb forces during the war -- Grbavica, Kovacici and Vraca.
Bosnia's war claimed some 100,000 lives and created two million refugees, almost half of the country's pre-war population.