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The Appellate Chamber of the State Court rendered a decision revising the first-instance verdict for crimes committed in Borkovac village, Bratunac Municipality, and reducing the sentence against Mirko Todorovic to 13 years’ imprisonment and Milos Radic to 12 years.
The Appellate Chamber sentenced Todorovic and Radic as “abettors in crime against humanity, and persecution, executed by torturing and killing people”.
They were found to have participated in the torture and murder of a group of Bosniak civilians in Borkovac village on May 20, 1992.
The two indictees were originally sentenced, under the first-instance verdict, to 17 years’ imprisonment as accessories to crimes against humanity.
The first-instance Chamber determined that the indictees, acting together with a group of Republika Srpska Army, VRS, members, participated in the capture and torture of 14 Bosniak civilians, who were hiding in an abandoned quarry, and the murder of seven of them.
Both parties appealed the first-instance verdict.
The Appellate Chamber accepted one objection contained in the Defence’s appeal, determining that legal provisions were incorrectly applied in the first-instance verdict, in which it was indicated that the indictees were “guilty as co-perpetrators of the crimes for which they were convicted”.
“The Appellate Chamber determined that, in determining whether the indictees substantively contributed to committing the crime, the relevant legal regulation was incorrectly applied in the first-instance verdict. In addition, the law under which the Chamber sentenced the indictees for detaining Bosniaks was also wrongly applied,” the State Court announcement says.
Because of these factors the Appellate Chamber determined that Todorovic and Radic “are guilty, beyond reasonable doubt, of helping others to commit persecution, as crime against humanity”.
At the end of January this year Todorovic and Radic were released from custody because the final verdict was not pronounced within nine months of the pronouncement of the first-instance verdict.
