Nearly 1900 Years in Prison for War Crimes

Sentences have been handed down in cases of detention, torture, rape, murder, and the Srebrenica genocide.

Abduladhim Maktouf was the first person to appear before the state court on war crimes charges. He was arrested in the summer of 2004 on the grounds of falsifying business documentation related to the import of household appliances and other goods.

A year later, the Bosnian state prosecution filed an indictment against Maktouf charging him with war crimes in the Travnik area. He was charged with helping the El Mujahideen Unit kidnap five Croat civilians.

On July 1, 2005, Maktouf was sentenced to five years in prison – this was the first Bosnian state court verdict for war crimes. The verdict was confirmed by the appeals chamber of the state court a year later.

The story of Maktouf’s case ended in March of this year. His sentenced was reduced by two years, after the criminal code of the former Yugoslavia was applied in his case. Yugoslavia’s criminal code provides more favourable sentencing for guilty parties. After Maktouf served his sentence, he was deported from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Batko and his accomplices

The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina was founded in 2003, while the War Crimes Section of the court was formed at the beginning of 2005.

Verdicts against 189 defendants have been pronounced since. One fourth of them have been acquitted of charges against them. The shortest sentence was a year and a half in prison, while the longest was 42 years. The latter sentence was handed down in the case of Veselin Vlahovic, also known as Batko.

Vlahovic evaded the charges against him for years. News about his arrest in Spain on April 2, 2010, was widely reported. The police arrested him on the suspicion that he belonged to a group of assailants who pillaged houses during the war.

Nearly five months later Vlahovic was extradited due to charges that he committed multiple murders, rape and other crimes in the Grbavica, Kovacici and Vraca neighbourhoods of Sarajevo, which were controlled by the Bosnian Serb Army.

The trial began in 2011, and was described by the state prosecution as the most extensive indictment ever. Vlahovic was given a maximum sentence of 45 years in prison which was repealed. Last year the appeals chamber of the state court reduced his sentence by three years.

“All that was accompanied by an extremely cold-blooded and arrogant model of behaviour. As a result, the witnesses, indirect and direct victims, described him as a monster from Grbavica, as the notorious Batko,” judge Zoran Bozic said during the reading of his sentence at the end of the first instance trial.

Later on the state court sentenced two of Vlahovic’s accomplices, Sasa Baricanin and Zoran Dragicevic, to 18 and 11 years in prison.

A total of 38 other people have been sentenced with long-term imprisonment, meaning 20 or more years.

The longest sentences were pronounced against Zoran Babic, for war crimes committed against the non-Serb population in Prijedor, and Franc Kos, for participating in the shooting of approximately one thousand Srebrenica residents. They were both sentenced to 35 years in prison.

“They executed the liquidations in a cold-blooded manner. During the executions they took breaks to eat and drink beer on a meadow full of corpses, while other men were waiting to be shot,” the verdict against Kos and others said.

Acquitted and then sentenced

Verdicts handed down by the appellate chamber of the state court reveal mistakes that were made in first instance chambers, particularly with regards to seven verdicts of release.

The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina initially acquitted Sefik Alic, Suad Kapic, Musajb Kukavica, Bosko Lukic and Marko Adamovic, Djordjislav Askraba and Zdravko Mihaljevic. At the end of their retrials all of the defendants were sentenced to a total of 73 years in prison. Mihaljevic even admitted his guilt during the appeals process.

Drazen Mikulic, who was sentenced to one and a half years in prison for abusing a Bosniak civilian in the Dretelj detention camp near Capljina, was given a shorter sentence. He was found guilty of participating in the beating of a detainee named Enver Grebovic. It was determined that Mikulic also cut his chest with a piece of glass and drank his blood. He was acquitted of charges contained in other counts.

“The chamber has considered Mikulic’s previous life, the fact that he has not been sentenced before and that he has three underage children, as well as the fact that he was very young when he committed the crime, as mitigating circumstances,” said judge Dragomir Vukoje.

Srebrenica and Prijedor

When it comes to individual towns, most convicts have been sentenced for war crimes committed in Srebrenica and Prijedor.
A total of 23 people have been sentenced for genocide and other crimes in Srebrenica. Most of the guilty parties belonged to the Special Police Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army and the Tenth Commando Squad, which was subordinated to the Main Headquarters of the Bosnian Serb Army.

The shooting unit of the Tenth Commando Squad consisted of eight soldiers, who killed approximately one thousand captives from Srebrenica in Branjevo near Zvornik on July 16, 1995.

Apart from Kos, the state court handed down sentences against the following members of that unit: Stanko Kojic, Vlastimir Golijan, Zoran Goronja and Marko Boskic. The trial of Aleksandar Cvetkovic is still underway. Drazen Erdemovic was previously sentenced at the Hague. The eighth member, Brano Gojkovic, remains at large. A red international warrant has been issued against him, as per a request by the Bosnian state prosecution.

A total of 16 people have been found guilty and sentenced for war crimes against the Bosniak and Croat population in Prijedor. Two thirds of them have been sentenced for the murder of men at Koricanske Stijene on Mount Vlasic. A convoy of civilians, who were traveling from Prijedor to Travnik on August 21, 1992, was stopped on Mount Vlasic. Members of the Interventions Squad of the Prijedor police then separated about 200 able bodied men from their families and escorted them to Koricanske Stijene.

“The men who were separated realized something horrible was going to happen. They were saying, ‘People, they’re going to kill us,’ and crying and saying, ‘Don’t.’ It was awful…unthinkable…then they began jumping down and the shooting began,” said Damir Ivankovic, who was sentenced to 14 years in prison after having plead guilty in July 2009.

Only a few of the men sent to Koricanske Stijene survived. Husein Jakupovic was one of them.

“When we arrived at Koricanske Stijene, they told us they would exchange us according to the ‘alive for alive’ principle. We were first ordered to stand next to a cliff and then on the side of the road facing the abyss and kneel down. I was in the first row. All I know is I saw cliffs and an abyss. They began shooting. I jumped down, but somebody bumped into me, so I remained stuck between the cliffs,” Jakupovic said at the trial.

Ten policemen from Prijedor were sentenced to 183 years in prison for the murders at Koricanske Stijene.

In addition to those sentenced under second instance verdicts, 13 defendants have been sentenced to 136 years in prison after first instance trials. Appeals have been filed against these verdicts.

Trials against several defendants charged with war crimes committed throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina are underway at present.