Bosnia Releases Ten War Crimes Convicts
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The court quashed the verdicts that sentenced the ten men to jail terms ranging from 14 to 33 years in prison, because the stricter Bosnian criminal code from 2003 was wrongly used instead of the former Yugoslavia’s more lenient criminal code from 1976.
All ten have been released from prison and will be retried.
Among those freed were Slobodan Jakovljevic, Aleksandar Radovanovic, Branislav Medan, Brane Dzinic, Milenko Trifunovic and Petar Mitrovic who were sentenced to a total of 181 years in prison for involvement in the Srebrenica genocide.
Nikola Andrun, jailed for 18 years for war crimes in Capljina, was also released, as were Mirko ‘Spire’ Pekez and Mirko ‘Mile’ Pekez and Milorad Savic, who were convicte together of war crimes against civilians in Jajce.
The Bosnian constitutional court ordered the quashing of the verdicts, after the European Court for Human Rights ruled that the 2003 Bosnian criminal code had been wrongly used to try crimes which happened before it was introduced.
