Karajic: Verdict Due on November 22

The Court is due to pronounce the verdict on November 22, 2011.

In his closing statement presented before the Appellate Chamber indictee Karajic said that he “found himself on the other side of the law in three counts contained in the indictment”, saying that he killed Amir Karajic, known as Kolac, and beat two persons up.

Karajic called on the Appellate Chamber to take the mitigating circumstances he mentioned into consideration when making its decision. “I apologised for all the things I did. I am mentioning my health condition, my disability, as a mitigating circumstance. I am a family man. I was young during the war,” he said.

Under a first instance verdict pronounced in April 2010, Karajic, former member of the Fifth Corps with the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, was sentenced for the murders, inhumane treatment, unlawful detention and beating of civilians and members of the National Defence of the Western Bosnia Autonomous Region, ND WBAR.

Karajic was found guilty of seven, out of ten counts, related, among other things, to the murder of Amir ‘Kolac’ Karajic on August 4, 1994 and the murder of another member of ND WBAR, whom he took out of the Detention Unit of the Police Station in Vrnograc, Velika Kladusa municipality and shot.

Under the first instance verdict, Karajic was sentenced for having “committed groundless arrests” in December 1994 and “ordered his subordinates to arrest civilians, who, as he supposed, supported the WBAR idea”, and take them to the school building in Todorovska Slapnica village, where some of them were killed, while others were subjected to inhumane treatment and torture.

After the Prosecution and Defence had filed appeals, the Appellate Chamber revoked the first instance verdict and ordered a retrial, which began in May 2011.

Presenting his closing statement, Hasan Veladzic, Defence attorney of the indictee, said that Karajic “had lived a spotless life” until the murder of Kolac. Veladzic said that, besides admitting guilt for three counts, the indictee could not have possibly been present at the other crime locations.

“There was a realistic chance of mixing people up with somebody else,” Veladzic said, adding that other people “committed the acts charged upon Suljo”.

Veladzic said that Karajic was “an ordinary soldier” until January 13, 1995, adding that he only became Commander of the Military Police Squad of the Fifth Corps with the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina on that date.

Defence attorney Veladzic told the Appellate Chamber judges that the part of the first instance verdict, acquitting him of charges, “must not” be reconsidered.