Bosnia Jails Mostar Fighter for Crimes Against Humanity
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The state court in Sarajevo on Monday convicted Savinovic, a former member of the Benko Penavic Convicts’ Battalion of the Croatian Defence Council’s Anti-Terrorist Group, of participating in persecution by committing murders and being involved in the forcible resettlement of Bosniak civilians in the Mostar area from May 1993 to the end of that year.
The verdict said that Savinovic, who was accompanied by three members of the Croatian Defence Council, barged into an apartment where three women and a baby were on July 15, 1993 and took them out.
One of them managed to save herself, while the bodies of the others, including the baby, were found around half an hour later, the verdict said.
“During the presentation of evidence, the defence tried to prove that the defendant could not have been present at the crime scene at that time, because he was on the front line, but the chamber could not accept the evidence related to those circumstances as true and objective,” said presiding judge Zeljka Marenic.
The verdict also said that Savinovic also barged into another apartment where two women and their mother lived.
He forced them out of the apartment and escorted them to the dividing line between Croatian Defence Council and Bosnian Army forces in Mostar.
While shooting around and above them, together with other Croatian Defence Council soldiers, he forced them to flee to the eastern part of the city, which was under the control of the Bosnian Army, the verdict said.
“The defendant himself confirmed having been present in the family’s apartment,” judge Marenic said.
Marenic said that in order to classify the crime as a crime against humanity, it was necessary to establish the existence of a widespread and systematic attack by the Croatian Defence Council against Bosniak civilians in the Mostar area in 1993 and prove that the defendant’s actions were part of that attack.
“The chamber has considered all pieces of evidence in a careful and all-round manner and has found that the defendant committed the actions described in the verdict,” she said.
She explained that the eight-year sentence given to Savinovic was shorter than the mandatory minimum sentence because the defendant was very young at the time was committed, among other reasons.
The verdict can be appealed.
