Bosnian Army Soldiers Jailed for Prisoner Abuse

Two former members of the Bosnian Army’s Fifth Corps were sentenced to three-and-a-half years in jail each for the abuse of prisoners detained at a barracks in Bihac.

The appeals chamber of the Bosnian state court on Wednesday convicted ex-soldier Adil Ruznic, a former security officer in the Bosnian Army’s Fifth Corps, of giving signals to guards in the Adil Besic barracks in Bihac to hit prisoners who were being interrogated, while Mustafic was found guilty of hitting the detainees himself.

The crimes were committed between September 1995 and January 1996.

A third defendant, Mehura Selimovic, was acquitted of all charges.

“The chamber found that questioning in the Adil Besic barracks had a formularised pattern which was inhumane,” said presiding judge Redzib Begic.

“The questioning was always done with a guard who would, after getting a signal from the security officer – which the witnesses recognised as Ruznic – would hit the prisoner. The security officer would give the signal if he was unhappy with the prisoners’ answers,” he said.

“Even though some of the prisoners admitted they only understood the connection between the abuse and signals after talking to other prisoners, this does not deny Ruznic’s guilt, but demonstrates that the witnesses spoke truthfully,” the judge added.

The court accepted as mitigating circumstances the fact that the two men have families and no previous convictions, and had behaved appropriately during the trial.

Selimovic, another former Bosnian Army Fifth Corps security officer, was acquitted of committing crimes in the Adil Besic barracks, the Hotel Park and the Luka prison in Bihac, as well as the Rad auto repair shop in Cazin in 1994 and 1995.

According to judge Begic, the prosecution failed to prove the exact circumstances in which the alleged crimes took place.

Under the first-instance verdict, Selimovic and Ruznic were sentenced to eight years in prison each and Mustafic to nine years. But this verdict was quashed and a retrial started in 2013.

The new verdict cannot be appealed.