Bosnian court jails woman for wartime torture

SARAJEVO, Dec 27 (AFP): A Bosnian court Wednesday sentenced a former Croat female soldier to 14 years in jail for crimes including torture, the heaviest sentence handed down against a woman for atrocities committed during Bosnia's 1990s conflict.

Azra Basic, 58, was extradited to Bosnia in late 2016 by the United States where she emigrated after the 1992-1995 war.

She was arrested in 2011 on a Bosnian warrant and her trial opened in January.

Basic was found guilty of war crimes against ethnic Serb civilians detained by Croat forces in April 1992 in the region of the northern town of Derventa.

Sentencing her, judge Sead Djikic stressed the "defendant's particular cruelty" in committing the crimes.

Described by some witnesses as the "mistress of life and death" during the war that claimed nearly 100,000 lives, Basic was found guilty notably of killing a detainee.

She also tortured a dozen other detainees, alone or with other military personnel, kicking and punching them or even hitting them with a baseball bat.