(AP) Bosnian authorities on Saturday demolished a Serbian Orthodox church that was illegally built on land owned by a Bosniak woman, a move that comes after a 20-year legal battle that saw the case reach the European Court of Human Rights.
A Serbian Orthodox church illegally built on land near Srebrenica and seized from a Muslim family after the 1992-1995 civil war was demolished on June 5, more than a year and a half after the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ordered its destruction. The church, long a flashpoint between the area's Serbs and Muslims, was built in 1998 in Konjevic Polje on land seized from Fata Orlovic, a Muslim refugee. The nearby Srebrenica is where more than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were massacred by Serb forces in 1995 including Orlovic's husband. When Orlovic returned, her family had their lands restored to them under the terms of the Dayton peace accords, except for the plot on which the church was built. The ECHR ruled in October 2019 that authorities must remove the church and pay damages to the Orlovic family totaling $36,500.
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