Bosnian Court Upholds Syria Fighter’s Four-Year Sentence

Ibro Cufurovic. Photo: State court

“The court has delivered a second-instance verdict rejecting the appeals filed by the prosecution, defendant Ibro Cufurovic and his defense attorney as unfounded, and confirmed the verdict,” the state court said in a statement.

Under the first-instance verdict from December 2019, Cufurovic was sentenced to four years in prison after having admitted that he left Bosnia and Herzegovina on April 21, 2014, travelled to Turkey and then illegally crossed the Syrian border with the intention of fighting for so-called Islamic State which was operating in Syria and Iraq.

According to the prosecution’s allegations, Cufurovic participated in terrorist activities under the name of Abu Kasim Albosni, offered help and fought for ISIL in Syria as a member of Bejt Komandos Unit, which was later renamed El Aksa.

Cufurovic was deported from Syria in April 2019 and the prosecution indicted against him in July that year. He previously admitted that he fought in Syria in 2014 and 2015, that he was a member of units there and did guard duty. He also said that he was captured, as a civilian, together with his family on the Turkish border in 2016.

In its appeal, the prosecution had sought a longer sentence for Cufurovic, arguing that he was “the first Bosnian citizen who stayed at the Syrian battlefront until the end and actively participated in ISIL forces”.

Cufurovic’s defence had asked for the first-instance verdict be revised and a shorter sentence imposed, while the defendant himself proposed that the time he spent in a military prison in Syria be counted towards his sentence.

The appeals chamber rejected all these appeals and confirmed the four-year prison sentence.