Syria Suspect ‘Close to Plea Bargain’ with Bosnian Prosecution

Muharem Dunić. Source: BIRN BiH

At a hearing to discuss a custody extension proposal, Muharem Dunic’s defence lawyer Senad Dupovac said that negotiations about a plea bargain were largely finished.

“In general, it has already been completed. The procedure at the prosecution is slightly more complicated now and consent is needed,” Dupovac said.

Dunic is one of seven Bosnian citizens who were deported to Bosnia and Herzegovina from Syria in December 2019 after having been captured. Several other members of that group have also announced that they are concluding plea bargains.

Dunic is charged with having gone to Syria from Austria, where he worked temporarily, in August 2014 and joined the so-called Islamic State.

The Bosnian state court of Bosnia and Herzegovina confirmed the indictment on June 12. After filing the indictment, the prosecution filed a custody extension motion due to the danger that Dunic might flee and disturb the peace.

At the hearing, prosecutor Merisa Nurkic said that several more witnesses had been questioned since the last custody extension order and that they said they had seen the defendant in a mosque in Austria and that he was among the first people who had left to go to Syria from the country.

Nurkic said the witnesses said that Dunic received a religious military training, worked at a hospital in Syria for a certain period of time, and received money from the so-called Islamic State, stood guard and apprehended people who did not go into combat.

Nurkic said that Dunic had not even tried to return from Syria until he was captured, that his wife was still at a camp there and that he might flee in order to join her.

Defence lawyer Dupovac argued that going to Syria was “mission impossible” at the moment. He said that Islamic State was defeated militarily and Dunic’s wife was confined to the camp.

Claiming that the case has not attracted much public attention, he proposed that the defendant be given house arrest.

The prosecution accuses Dunic, as a member of Islamic State, which was declared a terrorist organisation by the UN, of having participated in military activities which included grave violations of international humanitarian law, as well as of the laws and customs of war.

According to the charges, Dunic surrendered to Kurdish and allied troops together with other Islamic State members in the town of Baghouz in December 2019 after having been militarily defeated.

Dunic is to enter his plea in the coming period unless a plea bargain has been filed before that.