Detention for Novalic extended
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State prosecutor waiting for the results of DNA analysis on Repovci blood.
Mithat Novalic, under investigation for crimes committed in a Herzegovinian village in 1992, will be held in detention for a further two months.
Prosecutors had asked that Novalic’s incarceration be extended for three months but the War Crimes Chamber ruled on Monday that two was enough for the prosecution to examine witnesses and decide whether to indict him for war crimes.
Last week, a defence motion to release Novalic pending any indictment was rejected after prosecutor Vesna Tancica said he might flee. “We have taken cautious stance due to the possibilities of an escape, tampering with witnesses, as well as the gravity of the crime,” said Tancica.
The prosecution suspects that Novalic took part in the killing of nine members of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina who died in an ambush on the Repovci-Bradina regional motorway in July 1992. After the initial attack, the assailants shot each of the victims in the head and also mutilated some of them.
Novalic was a member of the Croat Defence Council, HVO, at the time. Shortly after the incident, he was named deputy sector commander, and then left Bosnia for Germany in 1993 with the consent of the HVO. He was apprehended on December 26 last year in Konjic on an arrest warrant issued by the state court.
The prosecution said Monday that it was still waiting for the results of DNA analysis of blood found at the scene, some of which is the type AB Rh negative that doesn’t match any of the victims. The prosecution believes that it belongs to one of the assailants.
Novalic reiterated he was not guilty of the murders. He said the blood isn’t his and that scars on his body are unrelated to the incident. “I ask that the DNA analysis and the examination of scars are done as quickly as possible,” he told the chamber on Monday.
