Bosnia Charges Serb Ex-Policemen with Wartime Murders, Rapes

Court and Prosecutor’s Office of BiH. Photo: BIRN BiH

The Bosnian state prosecution said on Monday that Ranko Cesic, Slobodan Ljubicic and Stojan Petrovic have been charged with committing a crime against humanity in the Brcko area between April and December 1992.

Cesic and Ljubicic are accused of killing four civilian Bosniaks, and of unlawfully and violently detaining female civilians, after which they raped and sexually abused them.

Petrovic has been charged with unlawfully detaining one woman and raping her, while threatening her that he would kill her next of kin.

The prosecution said the suspects committed the offences as policemen with the Interventions Squad at the Brcko Public Security Station, part of the Bosnian Serb Interior Ministry.

The prosecution confirmed to BIRN that Cesic is the same person who was jailed for 18 years by the UN’s war crimes tribunal in The Hague for torturing, raping and murdering Bosniak and Croat detainees at the Luka detention camp near Brcko in 1992.

Cesic admitted killing ten people, two of whom were beaten to death and the others shot dead, in a series of crimes that the court’s verdict said were committed with “depravity and cruelty”.

He told the court he was sorry for “all the evil I have done”.

Cesic was granted early release in 2014 after serving two-thirds of his sentence. The tribunal explained that he had shown remorse and had cooperated with its prosecutors by testifying in other war crimes cases in The Hague.

Cesic and Petrovic are both citizens of Serbia.

The indictment has been filed to the Bosnian state court for confirmation.