Verdict against Kadic Due February 6

Defence attorney Sead Topcic said that the Cantonal Prosecution had not managed to prove that Kadic had raped a Serb woman in Visoko in the summer of 1992.

According to Topcic, the indictment is “generalised and unclear” and statements given by Cantonal Prosecution’s witnesses “are contradictory and, therefore, unreliable and incomprehensible”.

“The voluminous medical documentation related to the injured party does not contain anything about the alleged rape and its consequences on her health. As it lacked such a piece of evidence, the Prosecution reached for a neuro-psychiatric expert examination to which we object, because it was conducted contrary to the law, considering the fact that the findings were in total contradiction to the medical documents and that it was made superficially,” Topcic said.

The indictment charges Kadic, former member of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, ABiH, with having raped one person in Visoko in 1992.

Defence attorney Topcic said that the injured party had said several times that she did not want a trial, but she wanted to be left alone.
“She told the Court that the thing was initiated by ‘those guys from Bijeljina’, so one could make a logical conclusion that she was forced to file a report and that she did not suppress a trauma, as the court expert determined,” Topcic said.

The Defence told the Trial Chamber to consider the fact that Kadic was wounded twice, that he was an unemployed family man and that he had not been sentenced before, as mitigating circumstances, when assessing the evidence.

Indictee Kadic thanked the Cantonal Court for being correct, adding that he was in an intimate affair with the injured party during the war.

Presenting its closing statement at a previous hearing, the Cantonal Prosecution said that it had been proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that the indictee raped one person and that he should be pronounced guilty of that.