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The county court in Zagreb has cut former Croatian Defence Council battalion commander’s Marko Radic sentence for committing crimes against humanity against Bosniaks in Mostar area of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 21 years to 12-and-a-half years in prison.
The Zagreb judgment, which was handed down on October 1 but has only now become publicly known, amended a verdict delivered by the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo, which originally convicted Radic, in March 2011.
Radic, who was due to remain in prison until 2027, will now be released by the end of this year because of the time he has already served.
The Zagreb court amended the Bosnian judgment because Croatia does not recognise the legal concept of a ‘joint criminal enterprise’.
Radic was found guilty on certain counts charging him with involvement in a joint criminal enterprise.
After he was convicted in Sarajevo, his request to serve his sentence in Croatia instead of Bosnia and Herzegovina was fulfilled.
The transfer was approved by the Bosnian justice minister, Josip Grubesa, on October 8. The county court in Zagreb had already accepted Radic’s request and passed a verdict taking over the execution of the Bosnian state court’s judgement.
The Bosnian state court’s verdict found that Radic, as commander of the First Bijelo Polje Battalion of the Croatian Defence Council’s Second Brigade, participated in setting up prisons and ordering the arrest and unlawful detention of several dozen Bosniak civilians, including women, children and elderly people.
The verdict also said that he participated in the unlawful detention of Bosniak men at the Heliodrom prison camp.
The men were taken to the village of Vojno to do forced labour and kept in brutal, humiliating and inhumane conditions in a garage and the basement of a house in the village.
Radic’s lawyer Ragib Hadzic, who represented him at his trial before the Bosnian state court, believes that the Zagreb court acted correctly in terms of following Croatian law.
“As regards the decision concerning the sentence, each country decides on the restriction of someone’s rights and so on in accordance with its own legal system,” Hadzic said.
