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Radoslav Brdjanin. Photo: EPA PHOTO/ANP/UPI POOL/ROBERT GODDYN.
The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague has granted early release to Radoslav Brdjanin, former leader of the Autonomous Region of Krajina, who was serving a 30-year prison sentence for crimes against humanity.
The UN court’s decision, which has now been made public after Brdjanin’s transfer to Bosnia and Herzegovina, said that in 2019, he had already served two-thirds of his sentence and there were “compelling humanitarian reasons” for his early release.
The president of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, judge Graciela Gatti Santana, said in the decision that Brdjanin filed an application for early release in August this year.
She said that she had received information from the United Nations Detention Unit in the Netherlands, where he was being held, about “the recent and apparently serious deterioration of Brdjanin’s health”.
Brdjanin, who is now 74, was transferred from a prison in Denmark to the UN Detention Unit a year ago.
A previous application for early release was rejected in 2020 because of the seriousness of his offences and because the court said that he had “failed to demonstrate that he has been sufficiently rehabilitated”.
During the war, Brdjanin was the political leader of the short-lived, self-proclaimed Autonomous Region of Krajina, which was established by rebel Serbs in north-western Bosnia and Herzegovina.
He was sentenced to 30 years in prison by the Hague Tribunal in 2007 for crimes against non-Serbs in the area, including persecution, torture and deportations.
He was arrested in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1999.
