Prosecution Calls for Longer Sentence in Srecko Boskovic Case

The state prosecution has filed an appeal against the first instance verdict, which it describes as too short to serve the purposes of punishing such a crime.

Prosecutor Predrag Tomic said Boskovic didn’t receive an adequately long sentence, considering the unscrupulousness he showed when murdering the boy, who has remained unidentified.

“The defendant hasn’t expressed any remorse at all, not even during the course of the trial,” Tomic said.

Boskovic’s defense attorney, Petko Pavlovic, filed an appeal against all the grounds in the verdict, which was handed down on July 3, 2015. Pavlovic said the factual status was incompletely determined and that the right to a defense had been violated during the trial.

Pavlovic said the testimony of protected witness SB-1, whose story formed the basis of the verdict, was unreliable. Pavlovic said SB-1 had constantly changed his statement, but that the trial chamber didn’t take that into consideration when deciding upon the verdict.

According to Pavlovic, the same witness said he hadn’t seen the defendant shoot the boy.

“The witness even left open the possibility that anyone else could have done it,” Pavlovic said.

Under the first instance verdict, Boskovic was found guilty of approaching a Bosniak boy after Serb soldiers had shot Bosniaks from the Srebrenica area and buried their bodies on the Red Dam plateau in the municipality of Zvornik in mid-July 1995. Boskovic allegedly told the boy that he was free to leave. When the boy walked away, Boskovic killed him with an automatic rifle.

The appeals chamber will render a decision at a later stage.