Bosnia Cuts Srebrenica Genocide Convicts Sentences
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The Bosnian court on Wednesday sentenced former special police force members Milenko Trifunovic, Brano Dzinic, Aleksandar Radovanovic, Slobodan Jakovljevic and Branislav Meden to 20 years each for aiding the genocide in Srebrenica.
They were convicted of the execution of around 1,000 Bosniaks from Srebrenica in the village of Kravica near Bratunac on July 13, 1995.
At their previous trial, Trifunovic was sentenced to 33 years in prison, Dzinic and Radovanovic to 32 years, and Jakovljevic and Medan to 28 years each.
But the verdicts were quashed because the wrong criminal code was used at the trial.
The constitutional court ruled that they should have been sentenced under the more lenient criminal code of the former Yugoslavia, which was in force at the time that the crimes were committed, not under the harsher 2003 Bosnian criminal code.
The constitutional court made the decision after the European Court of Human Rights ruled last year that two other convicts rights had been violated by the incorrect use of the harsher criminal code.
A total of 16 war crimes verdicts have been quashed by the Bosnian court as a result of the ruling so far.
