Bosnia Upholds Serb Ex-Soldier’s Crime Against Humanity Sentence
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Cvijan Tomanic and his lawyer. Photo: BIRN.
The appeals chamber of the Bosnian state court on Monday confirmed the verdict convicting Cvijan Tomanic, a Bosnian Serb soldier during wartime, of committing a crime against humanity in a village near Zvornik in 1992.
Defence and prosecution appeals against the first-instance verdict were rejected as “unfounded”, the court said.
The first-instance verdict found that Tomanic, accompanied by local residents, went to the village of Glumina in late May or early June 1992, looking for Bosniaks who were hiding in the woods.
The verdict said that three men came out of the woods, and then Tomanic and the others hit and kicked one of them.
Tomanic fired bullets around the man’s legs and when he tried to flee, the defendant and another man shot at him and he fell. One of the local residents then shot the victim with a handgun.
After that, the other two Bosniaks were taken away and their remains were later found in a mass grave at Crni Vrh, according to the verdict.
“The court found that Tomanic participated, within a widespread and systematic attack, in the persecution of the Bosniak population due to their ethnicity,” the verdict said.
The second-instance verdict cannot be appealed.
