Bosnian Ex-Fighter Acquitted of Assaulting Minor

Konjic. Photo: BIRN.

The Bosnian state court handed down a first-instance verdict on Tuesday acquitting Agan Ramic, ruling that the crime was incorrectly classified as a crime against humanity in the indictment.

Presiding judge Dalida Burzic said that the prosecution had not offered concrete evidence for this legal classification, and that the court had not found, on the basis of the evidence presented, that Ramic acted in the way portrayed in the indictment.

Burzic cited inconsistencies between the indictment and the victim’s evidence, adding that the victim did not even confirm where the incident took place.

“The injured party described it in a different way than the prosecution,” she said.

Ramic was indicted as a member of the municipal headquarters of the Territorial Defence force of the Bosnian Army in Konjic.

The indictment said that he went to the minor’s family’s house in the village of Brdjani, near Konjic, on an undetermined date in May 1992, wearing an army uniform, and asked the minor to catch a lamb for him.

The minor caught a lamb but Ramic was dissatisfied with it and started hitting him with a rifle butt. Other members of the Territorial Defence then joined in, the indictment claimed. Ramic was charged with having committed the crime as part of a widespread and systematic attack on the Serb population in the Konjic area.

But judge Burzic again pointed to inconsistencies between the indictment and the victim’s evidence.

“The prosecution claims that the injured party caught only one lamb, while the injured party claims to have caught two lambs on two occasions,” Burzic said.

Under the original indictment, Ramic was charged with committing crimes against the Serb civilian population in the Konjic area between May 1992 and May 1993 alongside Esad Ramic, Omer Boric, Sefik Niksic, Adnan Alikadic, Mitko Pirkic, Redzo Balic, Hamed Lukomirko, Safaudin Cosic, Muhamed Cakic, Ismet Hebibovic, Enes Jahic, Senadin Cibo, Zeljko Simunovic and Zdenko Grbavac.

However, Ramic’s case was separated from the others’ because he was unavailable to the Bosnian judiciary at the time.

Tuesday’s verdict can be appealed.