Bosnian Army Ex-Officer Faces Retrial for Croats’ Killings

The verdict convicting Enver Buza, the wartime commander of a Bosnian Army battalion, of failing to discipline his troops for the 1993 killing of 27 Croat civilians in the village of Uzdol, was quashed and a retrial ordered.

Autor:

Haris Rovčanin

17. December 2020. | 10:34

This post is also available in: Bosnian

Enver Buza. Photo: BIRN BiH

The appeals chamber of the Bosnian state court on Thursday upheld an appeal from Enver Buza, former commander of the Independent Battalion Prozor of the Bosnian Army, and quashed the first-instance verdict that sentenced him to 12 years in prison for wartime crimes in Uzdol, near the town of Prozor, in 1993.

The court said that Buza should be retried.

Under the first-instance verdict handed down in September 2019, Buza was found guilty of having controlled a unit that attacked the village of Uzdol on September 14, 1993 and killed 27 Croat civilians.

The verdict said that Buza was informed about the crime to a sufficient extent, which obliged him to conduct a thorough investigation. According to the judge, this was not done because he wanted to cover up the crime.

But his defence lawyer argued during the appeal that the first-instance court did not take into account important evidence that went in Buza’s favour and neglected the fact that he had initiated an investigation into the Uzdol incident.

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