Former Bosnian Serb Fighter Radosav Milovanovic Acquitted of Rape Charges
This post is also available in: Bosnian
On Friday, Milovanovic was acquitted of raping a Bosnian Croat woman in the village of Sase near Srebrenica in May 1992.
The trial chamber said that it didn’t find a correlation between the war in the Srebrenica area in 1992 and the rape, and as such said Milovanovic couldn’t be declared guilty of a war crime.
The chamber said that there was sufficient evidence to conclude that Milovanovic offered the victim coffee, sugar and cigarettes and invited her into his apartment, and that she agreed to do so.
“This demonstrates that she didn’t fear the defendant,” the court concluded.
The judges also stated that Sase wasn’t party to any military activities in 1992. As such, the act of rape the victim described, even if proven to be true, couldn’t be classified as a war crime. The chamber said under these circumstances the crime would be classified as rape, for which the statute of limitations has passed.
District prosecutor Vera Lazic told BIRN she will appeal the verdict.
