SARAJEVO, Feb 1 (Reuters) -Bosnian police have arrested a Bosnian Serb accused of murder, rape and intimidation of Muslims in the capital Sarajevo during the 1992-95 war, the prosecutor&${esc.hash}39;s office said on Tuesday.
Sasa Baricanin, 41, was arrested by the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) in the Bosnian Serb wartime stronghold of Pale, near the capital, the office said in a statement.
It said that Baricanin was under investigation by the state court&${esc.hash}39;s special war crimes division on suspicion of committing crimes against humanity in the Sarajevo neighbourhoods of Grbavica and Pale in 1992.
It said he was an accomplice of Veselin Vlahovic, also known as "Batko", a former Serb soldier suspected of hundreds of murders, rapes and tortures in Sarajevo. He was arrested last year in Spain and delivered to the Bosnian court.
"Baricanin is suspected of committing murder, rape, robberies and intimidation of Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) civilians in the Sarajevo neighbourhoods of Grbavica and Vraca together with Vlahovic," the office said.
Vlahovic, 41, who was born in Montenegro, had three pending international arrest warrants. He was arrested on charges ranging from armed robbery to burglary and had been jailed after the Bosnian war for an armed robbery in Montenegro in 1998.
Bosnian Serbs, backed by the former Yugoslav army, launched a bloody ethnic cleansing campaign in April 1992 and within a few months captured almost three-quarters of the country and encircled Sarajevo where more than 10,000 people died during the three-and-a-half year siege.
An official close to the Vlahovic investigation told Reuters the prosecution is wrapping up the inquiry, seen as one of its most extensive, and would most likely result in an indictment against Vlahovic and his accomplices within a month.
The Bosnian war crimes court was set up in Sarajevo in 2005 to relieve the workload of the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. (Reporting by Maja Zuvela; Editing by Adam Tanner/Maria Golovnina)
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