Bosnia Cuts Jail Term for Shelling of Tuzla
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The Bosnian court on Thursday handed down its maximum penalty of 20 years after a legal error at Djukic’s previous trial which saw him temporarily freed from prison in February.
The former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Ozren Tactical Group was found guilty of ordering an artillery squad to shell Tuzla on May 25, 1995.
Several shells hit the downtown area, known as Kapija, killing 71 people and injuring over 150 more.
Djukic was originally sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2010.
But the Bosnian constitutional court quashed the verdict because the more lenient criminal code of the former Yugoslavia should have been used at his trial, instead of the stricter criminal code of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had not come into force at the time that the crime was committed.
A total of 16 war-crimes verdicts have been quashed for the same reason.
Last year, MPs and victims’ groups in Bosnia’s Serb-led Republika Srpska entity called on its parliament to provide money to help overturn Djukic’s sentence, arguing that the court had not proved his guilt.
