Sarajevo: Police arrested eight former Bosnian Croat soldiers on Thursday, who were suspected of illegally detaining and torturing Muslim civilians, including women and children, during the country`s 1990s war, prosecutors said.
The eight men, some of them former officers, were suspected of committing war crimes against some 200 Muslim civilians who were held in a detention centre in the southern town of Ljubuski, the prosecutors said in a statement.
"The detainees were held in inhuman conditions, tortured, looted, beaten and mistreated in an extremely humiliating way," the statement said.
The crimes were committed between April 1993 and March 1994.
The suspects were arrested in Ljubuski, and in two other southern towns -- Mostar and Citluk.
The case was handed over to Bosnia`s judiciary by the special UN war crimes tribunal based in The Hague.
Bosnian Croats and Muslims were allies against Bosnian Serbs during most of the country`s 1992-1995 war.
However, they also fought against each other for 17 months in 1993 and 1994 in southern and central Bosnia.
The inter-ethnic war claimed some 100,000 lives.
