Family Killings Conviction in Busovaca Challenged

The Bosnian prosecution on Tuesday requested a longer sentence for Milic, who was convicted last November of killing an elderly man, a disabled woman and two other people from the same family in Busovaca in central Bosnia on April 26, 1993.

The court found that Milic, a member of the Croatian Defence Council’s ‘Nikola Subic Zrinjski’ Second Military Brigade, committed the murders along with another fighter, Zoran Marinic, who died during the course of the trial.

The defence also appealed, calling for an acquittal or a retrial, saying that there had been serious violations of criminal procedure and an incorrect and incomplete establishment of the facts.

“The trial chamber in the initial trial had only the testimony of the [deceased] defendant Zoran Marinic as evidence against my client. He was the only one who claimed that my client was at the crime scene,” argued Milic’s lawyer Slavko Asceric.

“All the other witnesses claimed that they saw Marinic, not Milic,” he added.

Asceric also said that the court did not take into account the positive testimony about the defendant’s character given by two defence witnesses.

“They testified how Milic saved two Bosniak families in the war. The trial chamber did not make a single reference to those witnesses. And we are not talking about a split personality who used to kill Bosniaks in the morning, with no motive, and used to save them in the afternoon,” said Asceric.

The prosecution said that it would give its reasons for appealing for a tougher sentence in writing.

The court will make a decision on the appeals at a later date.