Acquitted Serb War Crime Defendant Sues Bosnia for Compensation
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Ex-soldier Rade Vlasenko on Thursday launched his compensation case against Bosnia and Herzegovina after he was acquitted last year of taking three Bosniaks from the Trnopolje detention camp in the Prijedor municipality in the summer of 1992 to make them do forced labour and then killing one of them.
Vlasenko is asking for 20,000 Bosnian marks (10,210 euros) in compensation for his unfounded arrest, the nine days he spent in custody, and the time he spent under measures that restricted his movement.
But Fahreta Delic from the Office of the Attorney General said that the amount being claimed is too much, bearing in mind that Vlasenko spent just nine days in custody.
Vlasenko and two other Bosnian Serb ex-soldiers, Drago Koncar and Milan Krupljanin, were also acquitted in January 2019 of killing several other Bosniaks in the Prijedor area in 1992.
A BIRN investigation earlier this year found that the Bosnian state court has paid out over 1.8 million euros to acquitted war crime defendants over the past eight years, with legal experts blaming poor prosecution work for the spiralling costs.
