Serbian Court Jails Bosnian Serb Ex-Soldiers for Wartime Murders

A Serbian court convicted two former Bosnian Serb Army military policemen, Dragan Bajic and Marko Paukovic, of killing a Bosniak man, three women and a child in the Kljuc area of Bosnia in 1992. The Appeals Court in Belgrade has sentenced two former Bosnian Serb Army military policeman, Dragan Bajic and Marko Paukovic, to 12 years in prison each for killing five Bosniak civilians in the village of Kamicak in the north-wesern Kljuc municipality of Bosnia and Herzegovina in October 1992.

This post is also available in: Bosnian

The third-instance verdict was delivered on October 29 but only published on the court’s website on Wednesday. It is final and cannot be appealed.

According to the verdict, Bajic and Paukovic killed five civilians – Hasan Rahic (aged 60), Minka Jusic (70), Munira Hotic (54), Djemila Behar (54) and Safeta Behar (12) – on October 10, 1992.

The court took into account as aggravating circumstances the fact that most of the victims were women and one of them was a child, and that all of them were “unprotected people who did not do anything to make the defendants behave as they did, nor could they have caused the defendants to feel threatened”.

At the time of the crime, Bajic was 21 years old and Paukovic was 24.

Bajic and Paukovic have been acquitted twice of this crime by Belgrade Higher Court.

The first acquittal was in December 2017, but the Appeals Court sent the case for a retrial in June 2018.

The second acquittal verdict came in December 2018. However, the Appeals Court then reviewed the verdict and found Bajic and Paukovic guilty.

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City: Kljuc

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