Quashing of Thirteen-Year Sentence Requested

The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, BiH, requested the quashing of the acquitting part of the verdict, while the Defence asked the Court to quash the convicting part of the verdict. The Prosecution proposed to the Appellate Chamber of the Court of BiH to present evidence against and pronounce longer sentence against Jukic.  

“The Prosecution points out that a statement by key witness Zejnil Grcic is precise and clear. Testifying at the main trial, Grcic said that he saw, from a distance of 20 metres, that Zeljko Jukic killed Uzeir Sabitovic,” Prosecutor Sanja Jukic said.

She mentioned that, in the first instance verdict the Court called on a statement given by Grcic in 1994, when he said: “I think that Zeljko Jukic killed Uzeir Sabitovic”. However, as she said, in his statement given in 1995 the witness said that Uzeir Sabitovic was killed by Zeljko Jukic. 

According to her, witnesses’ statements also confirmed the allegations related to the inhumane treatment of witness S-2.

The Prosecution considers that the pronounced sentence is too short, particularly considering the fact that the indictee was pronounced guilty of the forced disappearance of five people. 

“Over the past 20 years he has never shown shame or regret. Why has he never said where those people ended up? Why hasn’t he apologised to families of the missing persons? The Court should have considered it an aggravating circumstance, but it did not,” Jukic said.  

On January 15 this year Zeljko Jukic, former member of the “Rama” Brigade with the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, was sentenced for having participated in the forced disappearance of five Bosniak civilians, as well as the abuse, robbing and forced resettlement of the local population.  

The Defence requested the quashing of the convicting part of the verdict, saying that the Prosecution witnesses’ statements were contradictory.  

“Zejnil Grcic is the witness to whom the first instance Chamber righteously did not trust. At the very beginning the Court was convinced that his statement was unconvincing,” Defence attorney Irena Pehar said.

She pointed out that the right to defence had been violated, because Jukic’s former Defence attorney Zlatko Milovic was “deleted from a list of attorneys”, so Jukic “did not” have an attorney in the period from August 30, 2012 to January 22, 2013.  

“In that period the Prosecution witnesses, on the basis of whose testimonies a verdict of conviction was pronounced, testified,” Pehar said. 

According to the Defence, the Criminal Code of the former Yugoslavia should have been applied instead of the Criminal Code of BiH. 

The Appellate Chamber of the Court of BiH will render a decision at a later stage.