Police officers of the State Investigation and Protection Agency of Bosnia and Herzegovina arrested seven persons in the area of the eastern town of Zvornik under suspicion of committing an act of genocide in the 1990s.

The suspects are former commanders and soldiers of the Bosnian Serb army's Zvornik brigade and are linked to the murder of nearly 800 Bosniak victims in the Orahovac area after the fall of the UN-protected safe zone Srebrenica.

The suspects will be sent to the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina for further processing, the Agency said.

N1 learns that one of the suspects is Sreten Milosevic, who acted as assistant commander of the Zvornik Brigade of what was called the Army of Republika Srpska in 1995.

He was a witness in the trial of Drago Nikolic, former chief of security of the Zvornik brigade before the UN court in The Hague.

Nikolic was in trial for shooting and killing Muslims in the Orahovac area after the fall of Srebrenica, which is the crime with which the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina now charges Milosevic and six other suspects.

Nikolic was sentenced to 35 years in prison as a part of the joint criminal enterprise of killing the captures Bosniak boys and men in Srebrenica in 1995.

He passed away in 2015 while on temporary release in Serbia.

As a witness in this trial, Milosevic then said that he was “deceived” when ordered to go to Orahovac to take care of securing the prisoners. He then saw blindfolded and handcuffed prisoners being loaded into vehicles and taken to a forest, with those who tried to escape being murdered immediately.

Asked what he did to help the prisoners once he realised they would be killed, he gave no answer.

“I am sorry for what happened, but I could do nothing about it,” he then said.