Seven Years Imprisonment for Basic and Sijak Confirmed
This post is also available in: Bosnian
The Chamber partially upheld the State Prosecutions appeal regarding the duration of the sentence, as well as the part of the appeal filed by indictee Basics Defence related to violation of the criminal law.
Under a first instance verdict pronounced in January 2013, Basic and Sijak were sentenced, according to the Criminal Code of BiH, to seven years in prison each, while the Appellate Chamber pronounced its verdict applying the law of the former Yugoslavia.
The remaining part of the verdict remains unchanged.
The verdict confirmed that, in the morning hours Basic and Sijak, who were accompanied by two unknown persons, raped a female person, who was visiting her brother in the prison in Sumarstvo building. At that time Basic was Chief of the wartime Section of the State Security Service in Olovo, while Mirsad Sijak was military policeman with the 122nd Light Brigade of the Army of the Republic of BiH.
The State Prosecution previously appealed the duration of the sentence, requesting the Court to revise the first instance verdict and pronounce longer imprisonment sentence, while the Defence of Basic and Sijak appealed due to the violation of the criminal proceeding, wrongly and incompletely determined factual status, requesting the Court to revise the verdict and acquit the two indictees or order a retrial.
