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Dragoljub Kunarac (centre) at the United Nations War Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague, March 1998. Photo: EPA PHOTO ANP-POOL/JASPER JUINEN
The President of the Mechanism, Judge Graciela Gatti Santana, stated that she does not believe that the conditions for the early release of Dragoljub Kunarac have been met.
Kunarac was arrested in 1998 and transferred to The Hague. He was sentenced to 28 years in prison for multiple rapes in Foca, eastern Bosnia, and for enslaving two women whom he deprived of control over their lives and treated as if they were his property.
“There continue to be significant factors strongly militating against his early release, including the high gravity of his crimes, and his failure to demonstrate sufficient signs of rehabilitation,” the decision reads.
Kunarac said his request for early release should be accepted, considering that torture, rape and enslavement are less grave crimes than murders and killings, noting also that requests by convicts in a similar position to him have been met.
He also stated that changes in his personal life and in Bosnia and Herzegovina indicate that his prospects for reintegrating into society would succeed. He said that, if his request was granted, he would reside in Foca.
Kunarac had served two-thirds of his prison sentence by November 2016. Requests for early release were rejected in 2017 and 2021.
But Judge Gatti Santana stated that she found little in the information submitted to her for considering the request to suggest that he felt any remorse.
“I am particularly concerned by the complete absence of critical reflection or of genuine regret about his role in the crimes for which he was convicted, his failure to accept his own responsibility, and the fact that he continues to have disproportionally aggressive responses over simple day-to-day matters,” she stated, concluding that Kunarac has not demonstrated that he has been sufficiently rehabilitated so as to merit early release.
Kunarac, alias Zaga and Dragan, has been in Germany since December 12, 2002, where he is serving a prison sentence after being convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY.
In 2019, the Bosnian prosecution raised new charges against him, accusing him of crimes against humanity committed in the area of Foca.
In 2001, in its verdict against Kunarac, Radomir Kovac and Zoran Vukovic, the Hague Tribunal established for the first time that rape constitutes a crime against humanity.
