Acquittal, Conviction or Retrial

The Defence of Mladjenovic requested the Appellate Chamber of the Court of BiH to either order a retrial or acquit its client of the part of the charges of which he was pronounced guilty. 
 
In March this year Mladjenovic was sentenced to three-and-a-half years in prison for having set two Bosniak houses on fire, while he was acquitted of charges that he committed murders. Zivkovic was acquitted of the charges that he participated in detention of civilians and setting a house on fire.
 
The Defence of Zivkovic considers that the State Prosecution’s appeal did not contain any allegations that could lead to changing of the first instance verdict. 
 
Prosecutor Ozrenka Neskovic said that the criminal proceeding was violated and factual status wrongly determined during the first instance trial. As she said, the first instance Chamber did not accept the allegation that a systematic attack existed and did not explain that.
 
“We consider that the Court must have given its reasons for determining that there was no systematic attack,” the Prosecutor said.
 
The Prosecutor further said that the first instance Chamber failed to consider several important facts, because it did not accept the proposal to examine additional witnesses and the statement given by a witness, who died prior to the filing of the indictment.
 
Due to these reasons the Prosecution of BiH requested the Court, in its appeal, to order a retrial, examine the witnesses and accept the statement given by the late witness or revise the parts of the verdict, acquitting the indictees of charges, and sentence them for those charges.
 
Mladjenovic’s Defence attorney Dejan Bogdanovic said that Prosecution witnesses could not be believed and that the convicting part of the verdict was based on their testimonies.
 
“The key thesis is that the witnesses are not trustworthy. They said a number of contradictory allegations,” he said.
 
According to the charges, Mladjenovic was Deputy Commander of the Reconnaissance Squad with the Territorial Defence, while Zivkovic was a member of the Territorial Defence.
 
The Appellate Chamber will render its decision at a later stage.