SARAJEVO: A Bosnian Serb sentenced last month to 20 years in jail for serial rape, enslavement and torture of civilians in the 1992-95 war is on the run, local media reported on Friday.Bosnian Serb SRNA news agency quoted a Serb Republic senior prison official as saying Radovan Stankovic, who was serving his jail term in the Foca prison in the east of Bosnia, escaped while he was being taken to a dentist.

“Stankovic broke away from his guards in front of the prison where a Volkswagen Golf car waited for him,” prisons inspector Milutin Tijanic told SRNA. The state war crimes court said it had not received official notification of the escape. Police in the Serb Republic, which makes up Bosnia together with the Muslim-Croat federation, were not available for comment.

In April, the appeals panel of Bosnia's war crimes court increased Stankovic's sentence to 20 years from 16 after he had been found guilty of running a brutal detention camp near Foca and of encouraging and assisting in the capture, torture, rape and killing of non-Serb civilians.—Reuters