Hailed by supporters as the heroic "defender of Srebrenica", former Bosnian military commander Naser Oric will be handed a verdict in his war crimes case Friday, as a Sarajevo court stirs debate by putting a growing number of Bosnian Muslims on trial.
Oric, 51, is celebrated by fellow Bosnian Muslims -- also known as Bosniaks -- for commanding the defence of Srebrenica, where some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were slaughtered in a 1995 massacre that was the worst atrocity on European soil since World War II.
He is on trial in Sarajevo on charges he killed three Serb prisoners in the area at the start of the 1992-95 war, which pitted the country's Serb, Muslim and Croat communities against each other.
It is a closely-watched case in a region where few Bosnian Muslim commanders have been brought to justice for their role in the conflict.
For years, perpetrators in the most serious cases were tried by the Hague-based UN tribunal set up after the 1990s conflicts in former Yugoslavia. Those judges overwhelmingly convicted Serbs in the Bosnian war: 52 in total, compared to 17 Croats and six Bosnian Muslims, according to a count by local media.
But with the UN tribunal officially wound up in December 2017, local courts have been left to carry on the work.
In Bosnia, that has seen prosecutors charge more Bosnian Muslims, with Oric one of the most high-profile defendants.
"Recently, there have been more and more war crimes charges against former members of the Bosnian army and police (mainly Bosnian Muslims), including commanders," said Erna Mackic, a Bosnian journalist specialising in war crimes cases.
According to his count, a third of the 375 suspects currently facing trials in the Bosnian State court hail from Bosnian Muslim security forces.
Ongoing cases include trials against two former generals, Sakib Mahmuljin and Atif Dudakovic, accused of war crimes against Serbs.
Several sentences have also been handed down recently against Bosnian Muslims convicted of crimes against Serbs and Croats.
- A country divided -
The trend has not been universally applauded in Bosnia, a country where ethnic divisions remain raw.
Many Bosnian Muslims view the prosecutions as an artificial attempt to "balance" responsiblity for the war crimes among the three communities.
Bosnian Muslims suffered the worst casualties in the conflict that killed around 100,000 people.
According to a study by the Research and Documentation Centre in Sarajevo, Bosnian Muslims accounted for 67 percent of the deaths, followed by Serbs (26 percent) and Croats (seven percent).
Murat Tahirovic, the president of a Bosnian group for war victims, accuses Bosnian courts of "abandoning" the principles followed by the UN tribunal, which he says "did not judge people on the ethnic basis, but on the basis of evidence".
"This is an attempt to bring all parties to the same level, so that we can say that we are all equally responsible for the crimes," he said.
On the other hand, Croat and Serb communities have welcomed the cases as adding more nuance to historical narratives of the conflict.
"Dozens of investigations, trials and verdicts handed down in the last two years before the Bosnian State Court, but also before other courts, have provided a completely different testimony about the war," praised a recent editorial in Croatian newspaper Vecernji List.
The president of an association of former Serbian wartime prisoners, Vinko Lale, has also called it "progress in favour of Serbian victims".
"There are more cases and there are also big fishes being caught... but at the same time, these cases are opened after 25 years, when there are no longer any quality witnesses," he said.
- Applause and anger -
Oric's case is similarly divisive.
In 2008 he was acquitted on appeal by the UN war crimes court on charges of not doing enough to protect Serb prisoners of war.
Unhappy with the verdict, Belgrade in 2014 launched an international warrant, which eventually saw him extradited to his home country to face charges.
During his first trial in Bosnia, Oric was regularly welcomed by women from Srebrenica who applauded whenever he entered the court.
His acquittal in October 2017 outraged Serb victims' groups.
A retrial was ordered for procedural reasons and now the verdict -- which Oric can appeal -- will be delivered on Friday, though it is unlikely to satisfy all sides.
Regardless of the outcome, the road to justice for all of Bosnia's war-related crimes remains long.
The Bosnian War Crimes Prosecutor's Office has charged some 820 people, around half of whom have been convicted including those who can still appeal.
But, a quarter of a century after the war, it is estimated that there are still about 5,000 suspects who have never been prosecuted.
