Unconvincing Reasons for Verdict

On September 28 a first-instance verdict was pronounced against Ilija Jurisic, sentencing him to 12 years in prison for using “impermissible means of combat” when a convoy of Yugoslav National Army, JNA, soldiers were attacked during their withdrawal from Tuzla in May 1992.

The Humanitarian Law Fund, which monitored the trial, said the District Court had refused to examine Defence witnesses who had knowledge about Jurisic’s activities in the period when the crime was committed. The Fund considers that, in doing so, the Court “failed to execute its most important task – which is to fully establish the facts and the responsibility of the indictee”.

“The Court did not examine police officers who were in the field on the critical day, although their testimonies were crucial in order to establish fully whether or not the attack had already begun in the moment when the accused relayed the order, what the order was, and if it was a defense order,” a statement issued by the Fund reads.

The Fund also determined that the Court had failed to hear Mato Zrinic, an injured party who was wounded in the convoy. It considers that the failure to subpoena Zrinic “could be related to the fact that he left the JNA and joined the Tuzla police after the event in question”.

As stated in the verdict, Jurisic was sentenced, as the duty officer in the Tuzla Public Safety Center, CJB, Operational Headquarters, because he relayed an order from a superior officer over the radio to attack a convoy located in the place known as Brcanska Malta in Tuzla on May 15, 1992. The indictment and verdict state that at least 50 JNA members were killed and at least 44 were wounded on this occasion.

“The Court accepted all counts of the indictment and did not check some of the relevant charges, such as whether or not Jurisic had actual authority to give orders to all armed forces,” the Fund said.

It further stated that the Jurisic case has been the first since the Republic of Serbia War Crimes Chamber was established in which the indictment was raised before the investigation was completed.

“The announcement of the indictment before the completion of the investigation and the persistent refusal of judicial bodies in Serbia to transfer the case to the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina which is also conducting an investigation into the same event, point to the political motivation of the authorities in Serbia to prosecute the Tuzla Convoy case in Belgrade, regardless of the Court’s inability to conduct hearings of a number of witnesses from Bosnia and Herzegovina in Serbia,” the Humanitarian Law Fund says.

The trial of Jurisic began on February 22, 2008. It lasted for 32 days, during which a total of 78 witnesses were examined, including 46 victim-witnesses and seven court experts.