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Serbia Convicts Bosnian Serb Ex-Policeman of Torturing Prisoners

2. February 2021.14:28
A Belgrade court sentenced former Bosnian Serb reservist policeman Milorad Jovanovic to nine years in prison for torturing civilian detainees at a museum in the Sanski Most area of Bosnia during the war in 1992.

This post is also available in: Bosnian


Belgrade Higher Court. Photo: BIRN.

Belgrade Higher Court found Milorad Jovanovic guilty on Tuesday of torturing non-Serb civilian prisoners who were being detained at the Simo Miljus Memorial Museum in Lusci Palanka in the Sanski Most area of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the summer of 1992, and sentenced him to nine years in jail.

“The fact that [Jovanovic] kicked the injured parties and beat them with his fists and baton was primarily established by the court from the testimonies of the witnesses, all of whom consistently described the blows they received, how they turned black and blue, and how they fainted,” said judge Vinka Beraha Nikicevic.

Beraha Nikicevic said the court took into account as aggravating circumstances “the gravity and consequences of the crime and the display of ruthlessness towards the victims, who did not contribute in any way towards the way they were treated”.

She said that the mitigating circumstances were that Jovanovic was young at the time that the crime was committed, that he had no previous convictions and that he has a family.

According to the indictment, Bosnian Serb reservist policeman Jovanovic, together with his commander Slavko Vukovic, who has since died, and other unnamed police officers, forcibly brought non-Serbs from villages near Sanski Most in June and July 1992 and imprisoned them in the museum in Lusci Palanka.

In order to get evidence about the possession of weapons or information about a group allegedly resisting Serb troops, Jovanovic hit prisoners with his fists, a shotgun and other objects, kicked them, tied them to a chair or a beam on the ceiling and beat them.

He also forced one of the prisoners, Dedo Dervisevic, to be baptised as Orthodox, and made him crawl on the floor and kiss his boots.

Dervisevic died as a result of the beating.

At the beginning of the trial, Jovanovic denied that he beat or hurt prisoners. He said that he did hit one civilian prisoner several times but, he insisted, the blows were “not strong” and the victim was not injured as a result.

Former prisoner Hajro Besirovic testified at Belgrade Higher Court in November 2018. According to a hearing report by the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre NGO, Besirovic said that Jovanovic, who he knew from before, “interrogated me and on that occasion beat me with a police baton” at the Simo Miljus museum.

Jovanovic admitted he hit Besirovic three times and apologised to him, but said that he had done so on the orders of his commander, otherwise he would have been sent to the battlefield.

Jovanovic’s indictment was issued in 2015 in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia took over the case in 2017.

Tuesday’s verdict was a first-instance ruling and can be appealed.

Milica Stojanović


This post is also available in: Bosnian