LONDON — Prosecutors in Serbia said Wednesday that eight men suspected of participating in Europe’s bloodiest massacre since World War II had been arrested in what were described as the first detentions of direct participants in the killing of 8,000 Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995.
The arrests apparently represented a widening of the prosecution beyond high-level officials and commanders. They also seemed to be part of a Serbian attempt to come to terms with the recent past as the authorities in Belgrade, the capital, pursue membership in the European Union.
Police officers seized the men in several places across Serbia, and prosecutors accused them of killing more than 1,000 Bosnians at a warehouse in Kravica, near Srebrenica — a name that has become a byword in modern European history for genocide.
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Bruno Vekaric, Serbia’s deputy war crimes prosecutor, said the case was the first related to people directly involved in the killings.
“We have never dealt with crimes of this magnitude,” he said. “It is very important that Serbia take a clear stance toward Srebrenica through the judicial process.”
He added, “We have sent a clear message that the Srebrenica victims, perpetrators, or even potential war crimes will not be forgotten.”
The police had initially put the number of suspects at seven, arrested early Wednesday. But Vekaric later said that an eighth man had been arrested during the day in the northern city of Novi Sad.
The seven men reported to have been arrested were identified only by their initials, and the police were also said to be pursuing suspects in neighboring countries. Vekaric said five more suspects were at large.
The massacre took place over several days after Serbian forces overran Srebrenica, which was designated as a UN “safe haven” under the control of Dutch soldiers during the fighting and ethnic cleansing that marked the breakup of the former Yugoslavia.
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Some of the most prominent figures of the era, including the Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander, Ratko Mladic, are standing trial in separate cases at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, where they are facing charges including genocide.
Serbian officials said the latest arrests were the first of people accused of killing Bosnians who had been rounded up, their hands bound, before the massacre. They are likely to be tried in Serbia, not in The Hague, Serbian officials said.
In 2007, a war-crimes court in Serbia convicted four Serbian former security officers from a paramilitary unit called the Scorpions of killing six Bosnian men from Srebrenica near the village of Trnovo around the same time as the massacre. But the judge in that trial, Gordana Bozilovic-Petrovic, said there was no evidence to tie the killings to the slaughter in Srebrenica, 90 miles away.
The newest arrests were likely to be closely followed in various parts of the former Yugoslavia.
“This has already had a major impact on the people here, and it will be very important in the process of reconciliation in the region,” said Novak Vuco, a legal officer in the prosecutor’s office in Belgrade.
The suspects, Vuco said, will be interviewed Wednesday and Thursday.
“Our priorities now are to conduct the interviews, gather as much evidence as possible, and prepare a steady ground for the trial as soon as possible,” Vuco said. “The hope is to have the indictments ready before the June anniversary of the breakup of former Yugoslavia.”
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