Policeman’s Jailing For Koricanske Stijene Massacre Upheld

The Bosnian state court’s appeals chamber on Friday confirmed the guilty verdict handed down to Zecevic, who was convicted of crimes against humanity for his involvement in the killings in August 1992.

The civilians who were killed were Bosniak detainees who were separated from a larger convoy of prisoners by a Bosnian Serb police unit, put into buses and taken to the Koricanske cliffs on Mount Vlasic in central Bosnia, where they were lined up and killed so that their bodies fell into the ravine.

Two other former Bosnian Serb policemen, Radoslav Knezevic and Marinko Ljepoja, have also been jailed for 23 years each over the massacre.

The court rejected the appeal from Zecevic’s defence for the first-instance verdict to be quashed or turned into an acquittal, as well as the prosecution’s call for a longer prison sentence.

At the start of the appeals procedure, Zecevic made a plea bargain with the prosecution, which proposed a sentence of 10 to 13 years of prison.

But the court rejected this, saying that it did not match the seriousness of the offence.