Milan Lukic Demands Jail Transfer from Estonia

In a motion filed to the President of the Hague Tribunal’s Residual Mechanism, Lukic attorneys, Jason Alarid and Dragan Ivetic, requested their client be transferred from a prison in Tartu Vangla, Estonia because his inability to speak Estonian has resulted in his isolation.

“The inability to communicate with other convict and staff brings increasing psychological pain, which can be interpreted as cruel and inhumane treatment. Such language barrier prevent him from participating in social, working and rehabilitation programs,” the motion states.

Lukic’s defence said that his wife and child, who is only one and one-half year old, live in Germany, and that it takes them more than ten hours to travel to Estonia, which further “aggravates circumstance”.

They requested his immediate transfer to the Scheveningen detention unit, and a hearing to discuss his transfer to another country.

Lukic was sentenced to life in prison by the Hague tribunal in 2012 for crimes committed in the Visegrad area, and he was transferred to Estonia in February 2014.

He and his cousin Sredoje Lukic were found guilty of taking part in the murders, extermination and expulsion of Bosniaks civilians in the eastern Bosnian town of Visegrad in 1992 and 1993.

Lukic was responsible for two of the most notorious massacres of the Bosnian War in June 1992, when around 120 women, children and elderly people were burned alive in their houses by the paramilitaries.