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The Serbian Appeals Court on Tuesday acquitted ten people of charges of helping to conceal former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic in his flight from justice.
One defendant, retired Bosnian Serb Army, VRS, general, Marko Lugonja, was given a conditional jail sentence of six months.
Milica Kostic, from the Humanitarian Law Centre from Belgrade, said the verdict was unsurprising. The sentence against Lugonja was “shamefully short”, she added.
“What is most interesting is that Lugonja admitted guilt to the charges, so the Serbian judiciary had no other choice . The man had admitted guilt, so, of course, they had to sentence him and, of course, they pronounced the shortest possible sentence,” Kostic explained.
According to Kostic, the biggest problem was in fact that the state must have been involved in helping to hide the most-wanted fugitive from the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, ICTY. Yet, this issue had not been opened up at all.
“Unfortunately, we have not been given an answer to the question about why Serbia kept Mladic for 15 years,” Kostic said.
Belgrade-based attorney Milorad Konstantinovic said court cases related to the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s were often used for political purposes.
“It often all comes down to a political agreement, which results in something being presented to people as an attempt to shed light on the events that happened in the 1990s. But nobody deals with this subject seriously. There is no political interest in the region in finding the truth,” Konstantinovic said.
Representatives of victims of the 1992-5 war in Bosnia said they were neither satisfied nor surprised by the court verdict.
“I am honestly surprised that they were not awarded decorations. It surprises me, because, after all, they hid their big hero,” Munira Subasic, president of the “Mothers of Srebrenica and Zepa Enclaves” association, said.
“No news that comes out of Belgrade can surprise us anymore. I am sorry Serbia cannot face the truth. I am sorry that their children will never know the real truth and will live in the darkness forever,” she said.
The Appeals Court acquitted the following of concealing Mladic: Stanko Ristic, Ljiljana Vaskovic, Borislav Ivanovic, Predrag Ristic, Sasa Badnjar, Ratko Vucetic, Tatjana Janjusevic Vaskovic, Bojan Vaskovic and Blagoje Govedarica.
The court established that Lugonja hid Mladic in his apartment in Belgrade in September 2002.
At the time, Mladic, who commanded the VRS during the war in Bosnia, was trying to avoid extradition to the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia, ICTY.
Mladic was finally arrested in Serbia in 2011 after having been on the run for more than 15 years.
The ICTY has charged him with genocide and other crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The pronouncement of a first-instance verdict in his case is expected in November.
