Bosnian Serb Fighter Acquitted of Wartime Rapes

The trial chamber at the district court in Eastern Sarajevo ruled on Monday that Markovic did not rape the two women in June 1992 in the village of Babin Potok in the Visegrad municipality of eastern Bosnia during wartime.

Explaining the verdict, the judges said that “there were discrepancies in depositions given by the witnesses during the investigation and their testimony given at the trial”.

The women testified at the trial as protected witnesses codenamed S-1 and S-2.

Markovic, a former serviceman with the Bosnian Serb Army, was accused of raping S-1 and then threatening S-2 with a knife, demanding money and gold, and forcing her to have sex with him.

“The prosecution based the indictment on depositions from S-1 and S-2, and as the testimony progressed, the trial chamber concluded that the defendant did not rape these two people,” the court concluded.

Markovic was not held in custody during the trial and did not appear in court for the verdict.

The verdict can be appealed at the supreme court in Bosnia’s Serb-led entity Republika Srpska.