SARAJEVO: A former Bosnian Croat military commander was charged on Friday with war crimes including the raping of dozens of detained ethnic Serb women during Bosnia’s 1990s war.

Mladen Kurdija was charged with committing “war crimes, alone or with other members of (Bosnian Croat) HVO forces, against several dozens persons of Serb ethnicity who were illegally detained,” a state prosecutor’s statement said.

During Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war Kurdija was leading an HVO military police unit in the northern town of Bosanski Brod where ethnic Serbs were detained at police premises and a local stadium, it said.

“A large number of ethnic Serb women were raped, some of them on several occasions and in an extremely humiliating way in front of other detainees.

The detainees, both men and women, were tortured on a daily basis while a dozen were beaten to death or went missing.

Kurdija was indicted for having taken part in the crimes directly or having done nothing to prevent them even though he was a ranking officer.

The 56-year-old suspect currently lives in neighboring Croatia. He was brought in for questioning by Croatian investigators, who were working with their Bosnian counterparts on the case, a spokesman for Bosnian prosecutors told AFP.

A decision has not been made on whether he would be eventually tried in Croatia or in Bosnia, spokesman Boris Grubesic added.