Stankovic: Appeal launched

The Prosecution has filed an appeal against the November 2006 verdict passed down to Radovan Stankovic by the first instance Trial Chamber.

The appeal has been launched because the Prosecution “is not satisfied with the acquittal part of the verdict and the amount of punishment”.

Stankovic was sentenced to 16 years imprisonment for crimes committed in Foca.

The first instance Trial Chamber ruled that in 1992 he, as member of Foca Tactics Brigade’s Miljevina Battalion, took part in crimes committed against Foca’s civilians.

The Chamber also accepted that Stankovic was one of the organisers and supervisors in the so-called Karaman House, which served as a detention centre for women and which Serb soldiers called “the bordello”.

It stands in Stankovic’s verdict that all the young women were physically and psychologically abused, and regularly raped in various ways. According to the indictment, Stankovic formed this detention centre and controlled it with three other Serb soldiers.

The Chamber dismissed the count in the indictment according to which in 1992 a fully-armed Stankovic entered a motel in Miljevina town near Foca, where civilians were detained, separated SK from the others, forced her to take her clothes off and raped her.

He is also acquitted of charges according to which between June and December 1992 he entered the hospital in Foca, armed, took out a female patient and took her to an apartment where he raped her.

Stankovic, who was born in 1969, was the first indictee to be transferred by International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague to be processed before the court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in accordance with the ICTY’s exit strategy.