Bilbija Verdict Appealed

The appeal referred to the first instance verdict by the Cantonal Court in Bihac, which found Bilbija guilty of taking two Bosniak civilians out of the house from the village of Morda together with Zoran Seva and others, driving them to Donji Lipik and killing them, and then throwing their bodies in a pit.

“The punishment is low considering the gravity of the act. We have two victims, killed in vicious way, taken out of the house for no reason, only because they were of other ethnicity,” said the federal prosecutor, Munib Halilovic.

He added that the claims by the defence about evidence being obtained in an illegal way were unfounded, as well as claims that the act was not described precisely enough.

“The way a war crime is being proven has its own idiosyncrasies and it is not possible to be precise about all the actions undertaken… The claim that the cause of death was not proven also is not true, because the evidence is being collected when there are no more clues, when soft tissues disappear. However, that does not shed suspicion on the way the act was committed,” emphasised Halilovic.

According to the verdict, civilians Ismet and Becir Besirevic were killed by a firearm on July 10, 1992, by the defendant and Zoran Sevo, who has since passed away.

The defence pointed out that witnesses confirmed that military policemen took the Besirevics out of the house, as well as that the defendant was not a member of the military personnel on that day, nor that he had a weapon on him.

“The witnesses confirmed he was unarmed and wore pants. There was only one rifle carried by policeman Sevo, so shots were not fired from two rifles,” said the lawyer Jovo Pilipovic.

He mentioned witness Drago Kolundzija, who was “unreliable” and for whom doctor established “had a memory and reasoning disorder”, as well as Nedeljko Mrdja, “who was blackmailed because he robbed Bosniak property and killed his own brother.”

Addressing the Chamber, Bilbija said that he described everything that happened in his written appeal, especially pointing out that the son of the murdered man and other people from the village of Modra said they did not believe he committed these murders, as well as that his attitude to Bosniak did not change during the war.

The Chamber of the Supreme Court will make a decision on appeal at a later date.