Bosnia and Herzegovina's state Court sentenced Bosnian Serb forces officer Ostoja Stanisic to five years in prison for committing the crime of genocide in Srebrenica, the court ruled on Thursday.

Stanisic and his deputy Marko Milosevic, who was acquitted of all charges, were charged with the murder of 800 Srebrenica residents in July 1995 near Zvornik, where Stanisic served as a commander of a battalion in the Bosnian Serb forces and Milosevic as his deputy.

The indictment among other things said the suspects assisted in the plan to permanently and forcibly remove the Bosniak civilians from the UN protected zone of Srebrenica when some 40,000 Bosniak civilians were moved from the Srebrenica enclave and more than 7,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed.

Stanisic and Milosevic were accused of the criminal offence of genocide in line with the Bosnia's Criminal Code, Articles 171 and 180.

On July 11, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces overran the eastern Bosnian enclave and rounded up the town’s Muslim Bosniaks, separated men from women and little children and systematically executed some 8,000 men and boys. The bodies of the victims were buried in a large number of mass graves. Forensic experts excavated them and identified the bones through DNA analysis before returning the bodies to the families for interment on July 11 at the Memorial Centre’s cemetery.

The International Criminal Tribunal (ICTY) for the Former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice later ruled that the massacre was an act of genocide.

International and regional courts have sentenced 45 people for what happened in Srebrenica to a total of more than 700 years behind bars. Those who the ICTY sentenced to life imprisonment are Ljubisa Beara, Zdravko Tolimir, and Vujadin Popovic. But the most well known alleged masterminds of what happened in Srebrenica are former Bosnian Serb politician Radovan Karadzic and ex Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, and both have been sentenced for it but have appealed.