Croatia Cuts Bosnian Croat’s Jail Term, Causing Political Storm

The decision last week by Zagreb County Court to cut war criminal Marko Radic’s sentence has caused a political storm in Sarajevo.

A public feud erupted between a Bosnian Croat minister and his Bosniak deputy, while a war victims’ association filed a criminal complaint against the minister, Josip Grubesa.

The judgment which cut Radic’s sentence from 21 years to 12-and-a-half years in prison was handed down by Zagreb County Court on October 1. It amended a verdict originally delivered by the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo, which convicted Radic in March 2011.

Radic, who was convicted of committing crimes against humanity in the Bosnian town of Mostar, was due to remain in prison until 2027, but will now be released by the end of this year because of the time he has already served.

No ‘joint criminal enterprise’ in Croatia

The Zagreb court amended the Bosnian judgment because Croatia does not recognise the legal concept of a ‘joint criminal enterprise’, which formed part of the Sarajevo verdict convicting Radic.

Although there are currently about a dozen other people in Bosnia and Herzegovina who have Croatian passports and are serving war crimes sentences for crimes involving a joint criminal enterprise, lawyers are doubtful that Radic’s case can serve as a precedent enabling them to ask for a transfer to Croatia in search of a shorter sentence.

Bosnian justice minister Grubesa was the official who allowed Radic’s request to serve the rest of his time in Croatia.

His deputy, Nezir Pivic, told BIRN that Grubesa’s decision in the Radic case was “illegal and unacceptable”. He added that it will not be permitted in similar cases.

“This cannot happen, since this case should also have never happened. Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia have an agreement that clearly defines this as illegal,” said Pivic.

The Bosnian state court’s verdict in 2011 found that Radic, as commander of the First Bijelo Polje Battalion of the Croatian Defence Council’s Second Brigade, participated in setting up prisons and ordering the arrest and unlawful detention of several dozen Bosniak civilians, including women, children and elderly people.

The verdict also said that he participated in the unlawful detention of Bosniak men at the Heliodrom prison camp. The men were taken to the village of Vojno to do forced labour and kept in brutal, humiliating and inhumane conditions in a garage and the basement of a house in the village.

A question of dual citizenship

In October this year, Grubesa approved Radic’s transfer to Croatia, after which Zagreb County Court reduced his sentence.

Grubesa said that Bosnia and Herzegovina is a signatory to the European Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons – according to which every convict can serve his or her sentence in the country whose passport he or she holds – and that Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia have a bilateral agreement which allows for this.

His deputy Pivic claimed however that the Bosnia-Croatia agreement explicitly forbids the extradition of either country’s citizens, which means that such transfers can only happen in cases in which people who only hold a Croatian passport are sentenced in Bosnia and Herzegovina. If they also have Bosnian citizenship, they cannot be transferred, he said.

“Croatia has shown no cooperation [with Bosnia and Herzegovina] in these [war crimes] cases [against Bosnian Croats] so the minister should have been protecting Bosnian interests,” argued Pivic.

“Finally, the County Court changed the verdict so that Radic is allowed to go free in just a few days, which is unacceptable,” he added.

Watchdog organisation TRIAL International also said that Radic’s transfer was “unacceptable” because the agreement between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia does not envisage the extradition of either country’s own nationals.

“Considering there was a dilemma about how to act in cases in which there are people with dual citizenship, the answer is in the European Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons,” said TRIAL’s legal advisor Adrijana Hanusic-Becirevic.

The convention states that only “foreigners” imprisoned for a crime can be transferred to their home countries, Hanusic-Becirevic pointed out.

“Since Radic is not a foreigner in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but a citizen, and according to media reports has residency in Mostar, he is already serving his sentence in his community. So his transfer – as well as violating the agreement between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina –goes against the logic and spirit of the European convention,” she said.

The Association of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide filed a criminal complaint against minister Grubesa, calling the process through which Radic achieved his freedom “illegal”.

“The minister violated the laws of Bosnia and Herzegovina and allowed a war criminal to reduce his sentence by half,” the president of the association, Murat Tahirovic, told BIRN.

Grubesa declined to answer questions about the Radic case, but wrote a lengthy statement in which he described his deputy’s remarks and the criminal complaint as the “unacceptable gathering of cheap political points” and the misuse of “victims’ pain”.

The minister also said he was sorry that some politicians want certain people who have been convicted of war crimes “to be thrown in cells to which the keys are lost”, which, he added, is “not acceptable or in line with international standards”.

“In this specific case, a convict asked for his case to be transferred to Croatia for him to serve the rest of his sentence, and no authority in Bosnia and Herzegovina could stop this request, since this convict has this right,” insisted Grubesa.

He argued that extradition and the transfer of sentences are two different practices.

Lawyers disagree over Radic’s transfer

Lawyers and legal experts are also split on the issue of the legality of Radic’s transfer.

Nina Kisic, a lawyer specialising in war crimes cases in Sarajevo, claimed such transfers highlight “differences in [countries’] systems which allow justice to be avoided”.

“The problem is that these inter-state documents allow it,” said Kisic.

But Jelena Djokic-Jovic of Documenta – Centre for Dealing with the Past, an NGO in Zagreb, told BIRN that the entire process was “conducted in accordance with legal regulations”.

“In the Radic case, command responsibility was considered the basis for conviction – that he failed to prevent the crimes, ordered and participated in the establishment of the detention system and personally committed some crimes. He was sentenced to 12-and-a-half years in prison. Compared with sentences handed down to members of Croatian forces, I would say this is in the same range, or maybe slightly longer,” Djokic-Jovic said.

However, she also said that the Sarajevo authorities “could have requested the execution of the sentence pronounced by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina”.

Commenting on the Zagreb court’s decision to remove the reference to a joint criminal enterprise in the Radic verdict, Djokic-Jovic also explained that Croatian law does not recognise the concept.

“Croatia, in a political sense, is wary of that concept, particularly when taking into account the verdict against Jadranko Prlic and others,” she explained.

Prlic and five other former Bosnian Croats were sentenced by the Hague Tribunal to a total of 111 years in prison in 2017 for taking part in a joint criminal enterprise involving high-ranking officials in Zagreb, whose aim was to expel Bosniaks from territories controlled by Bosnian Croat forces.

The verdict, which named the late Croatian President Franjo Tudjman as a participant in the joint criminal enterprise, was heavily criticised by Croatian politicians, who deny that Zagreb played an active role in the Bosnian war.

Djokic-Jovic noted that in 2016, the Croatian government adopted a decision which “stops Croatian judicial bodies from acting in cases in which responsibility was founded on a joint criminal enterprise”.

However, Belgrade-based lawyer Aleksandar Lazarevic, who represents war crimes defendants at the Bosnian state court, said there is nothing controversial in the Croatian court’s decision to remove the parts of the verdict referring to a joint criminal enterprise.

In Lazarevic’s opinion, the joint criminal enterprise concept is being applied retrospectively by courts in The Hague and Sarajevo that deal with war crimes, as it did not exist in law at the time the crimes were committed.

“You cannot designate something a crime now and try people for committing that crime if it was not designated as such at the moment of its commission,” Lazarevic said.

At the same time as Radic, the Bosnian state court also convicted three other members of the First Bijelo Polje Battalion of the Croatian Defence Council’s Second Brigade.

Dragan Sunjic was sentenced to 16 years in prison, Damir Brekalo to 20 years and Mirko Vracevic to 12 years for committing crimes as participants in a joint criminal enterprise at the Vojno prison, in collaboration with other soldiers and guards.

In a separate trial, a former prison chief in Mostar, Ivan Zelenika, was sentenced to six years, while former Croatian Defence Forces member Ivan Medic was sentenced to seven years, Edib Buljubasic to six years and Marina Grubisic Fejzic to five years for participating in a joint criminal enterprise aimed at removing the Serb population from the Herzegovina area.

The defence lawyers for most of these convicts told BIRN that they had no intention of requesting their clients’ transfer to prisons in Croatian so they would be released sooner.

Fadil Abaz, who represented Ivan Zelenika, said it was “incomprehensible for one of our citizens to request that his sentence be executed in another country”.

“He is our convict, he was sentenced on the basis of our laws. The fact that he has dual citizenship does not give him the possibility to go from one country to the other,” Abaz said.

Midhat Koco, the lawyer for Dragan Sunjic, said there were “no indications or requests” that his client wanted a transfer to Croatia.

“I do not want to comment on that. If the law allows for it, it is OK. If not…” Koco said.

Danilo Mrkaljevic, Mirko Vracevic’s lawyer, also said he had not requested a transfer for his client.

“We have not been in contact since the completion of the case,” Mrkaljevic said.

Bosnian deputy justice minister Pivic was also adamant on the issue: “The Radic case will not become a precedent for similar cases,” he insisted.