The State Prosecutor's Office in Bosnia and Herzegovina on Friday indicted eight wartime Bosnian Serb police officers and four former Bosnian Army soldiers in two separate war crimes cases.

Among the eight police officers is Goran Saric, a retired police general who had served as the commander of a special police unit during the country’s 1992-95 war.

All the accused were arrested earlier this month and granted a pre-trial release after questioning.

According to the indictment, during the night between 24 and 25 September 1992 they illegally imprisoned all members of the Bosniak families Sarajlic, Sejmenovic and Malagic in the village of Bukes near the northeastern town of Bijeljina.

Half of the 22 prisoners were children, women and elderly persons. The Serb policemen took them to the village of Balatun where they executed them and dumped their bodies into the River Drina. The youngest victim was a six-year-old child and the oldest was a woman of 72 years.

The bodies of some of the victims were exhumed at several locations by the River Sava in Serbia after the war and were buried in Sremska Mitrovica. The remains of four victims have not been found to date.

In the other case, four Bosnian Army soldiers were charged with war crimes against Bosnian Serb prisoners of war. According to the indictment, the accused summarily executed two prisoners and abused several others in the Teocak area of northeastern Bosnia.