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High Representative Miroslav Lajcak has enacted amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code, stipulating that an indictee may be held in custody for 15 months following the pronouncement of a first-instance verdict.
“Without this amendment, three persons convicted in the first instance for war crimes would need to be released at the end of February 2009,” the Office of the High Representative, OHR, announcement says.
Until now, the Criminal Procedure Code stipulated that indictees could be held in custody for up to nine nine months after the pronouncement of the first-instance verdict against them and before an appeal was heard. Since this nine-month limit was breached in the case of four war-crimes indictees, the four men were released prior to pronouncement of second-instance verdicts.
A short time ago Chief ICTY Prosecutor Serge Brammertz sent a letter to the judicial institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina expressing his concern over the fact that Zeljko Mejakic, Momcilo Gruban and Dusko Knezevic might be released. The three men were sentenced by a first-instance verdict pronounced in May 2008 to a total of 63 years’ imprisonment for crimes committed in detention camps in Prijedor.
“Having in mind the urgency of the matter, the High Representative was forced to act to protect the Dayton Peace Agreement and ensure ICTY cooperation and the security of the citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina,” the OHR said.
Under the amendments enacted by Lajcak, indictees may be held in custody for nine months after the pronouncement of the first-instance verdict against them, but in some “extremely” complex cases “due to important reasons” the Appellate Chamber will extend the custody for a maximum of six months.
