Eight men have been arrested in a series of raids in Serbia, as the government launched a crackdown on persons involved in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

Prosecutors say they caught the members of a Bosnian Serb special police unit. They are included in a group of about a dozen, some of whom have been convicted and are already serving jail time.

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The Srebrenica massacre is considered Europe's worst genocide since World War Two.

The eight men reportedly took part in killing over 1,000 Bosnians in a single day in a warehouse near Srenrenica, towards the end of the 1992-1996 war in Bosnia-Herzegovina. For 11 days in July, 1995, a total of about 8,000 Muslim men and boys lost their lives in the widespread mass killings.

One of those who are now in police custody is Nedeljko Milidragovic, commander of the Bosnian Serb Special Police Unit, who had a nickname, "Nedjo the Butcher." Milidragovic has become a successful businessman after the three-year war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Serbia is applying for membership in the European Union and the action against the eight men are part of its mission to come to terms with its wartime atrocities. The 28-member organization wants Serbia to first hold itself accountable for the genocide, before even considering its membership application.

Ratko Mladic, the Bosnian Serb Military leader who is among those accused of masterminding the mass killings, is in The Hague facing prosecution in the International Criminal Court. He was arrested in 2011.

Four former para-military security officers had faced a Serbian war crimes court four years ago for the dealth of 6 Bosnian men in July, 1995 in the village of Trnovo. Although these crimes were committed during the same period as the genocide in Srebrenica, the judge found no connection between the two events, since their locations are 140 kilometers apart.

Srebrenica went through its bloodiest period in 1995 when Bosnian Serb forces attacked and occupied this town populated mostly by Muslims. This Serb-controlled part of Bosnia was supposed to be protected by the United Nations, but this veil of safety did not spare the residents from the massacre.

The Bosnian Serb assailants had separated the women and the children from the men, then systematically killed the men in this town.

TagsSerbia, Srebrenica massacre, genocide