SARAJEVO, March 11: The mothers and widows of Muslims massacred in Srebrenica during the Bosnian war said on Saturday they regretted the death of Slobodan Milosevic as it meant he would never face justice for the killings.

“It’s a pity we will not see him facing justice, that we will not hear the verdict,” the head of the Tuzla-based association of Srebrenica mothers, Hajra Catic, told AFP. “However, it seems that God (has) punished him already,” she said.

Both Catic’s son and her husband were killed by Serb forces when they overran the eastern Bosnian town of Srebrenica, then a United Nations “safe haven”, in 1995 and massacred some 8,000 Muslim men and boys.

Sulejman Tihic, the Muslim chairman of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, told AFP the former Yugoslav president’s death was “sad news for victims, for truth and for justice”.

“He will be remembered as a villain politician responsible for the suffering of thousands of people. He was the first head of state to be charged with genocide,” said Tihic, who testified against Milosevic in 2003.

Tihic was captured by Serb forces in the northern town of Bosnanski Samac at the beginning of Bosnia’s 1992-95 war. He was tortured over several months in four detention camps, two of which were based in Serbia.

Milosevic was found dead on Saturday in his cell in the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

“Because of the victims, truth and justice, it would have been better if he lived to the end of the trial,” Tihic said.—AFP