Convicted Bosnian Serb General Still at Large

The court of Bosnia and Herezgovina told BIRN that it has not asked the Serbian authorities to arrest Djukic and take over his sentence because it has no official information about where he resides.

“The court has yet to receive any information from Serbia about Djukic, even though we have asked through Interpol and urged them to provide information,” the court said.

Djukic’s lawyer, Milorad Ivosevic, told BIRN that Djukic is in Serbia for health treatment.

Ivosevic added that Djukic’s legal team had filed a request to the European Court for Human Rights seeking a retrial before the Bosnian state court.

Asked whether Djukic might come back to Bosnia, Ivosevic replied: “I don’t know.”

“No one knows what will happen after his treatment. If there is a retrial he will naturally return,” said Ivosevic.

Djukic, former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Ozren Tactical Group, was sentenced to 20 years in prison in June 2014 for ordering an artillery squad to shell the town of Tuzla on May 25, 1995. Seventy-one people were killed in the attack.

The former general did not turn up to serve his sentence, claiming he was having medical treatment in Serbia. He has not returned to Bosnia since.

Bosnia issued an international arrest warrant in October 2014, but Djukic cannot be extradited to Bosnia because of his Serbian citizenship. The two countries have no mutual extradition treaty.

However, he could be jailed in Serbia, which signed an agreement with Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2010 which allows Sarajevo and Belgrade to ask each other to take over the enforcement of sentences, if the Bosnian court asks this, which it has failed to do.

The Tuzla-based Truth, Justice, Reconciliation foundation filed a criminal complaint against Bosnian court judge Darko Samardzic to the country’s High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, saying “he failed to ask for Djukic’s sentence to be taken over by Serbia”.

“Samardzic failed to act in a timely manner, from the moment when the Bosnian court found that convicted war criminal Novak Djukic was in Serbia, asking the country to take over his sentence,” the Foundation said in a statement.

While the Bosnian court claims it has yet to receive official information that Djukic was in Serbia, the Foundation says Djukic’s whereabouts were known from June last year.

According to official Bosnian procedures, a convicted person can serve his sentence in another state if the trial chamber president in his case files an official request.

“If a person is a fugitive, but the court knows where he resides, the president of the trial chamber can ask the state in question to take over the sentence,” the court said, explaining this was not the case with Djukic, since it had not received information about his whereabouts.