Serbia Convicts Paramilitary of Killing Prisoner of War in Bosnia

The Higher Court in Belgrade. Photo: BIRN.

Belgrade Higher Court on Thursday convicted Nebojsa Stojanovic, a Serb paramilitary fighter in the Bosnian war, of killing a captured fighter from the Bosnian Croat wartime force, the Croatian Defence Council, in the village of Kozuhe in May 1992.

“Considering the two direct witnesses to the event and the circumstantial testimonies of other witnesses, the court established without doubt that Stojanovic committed the crime he is accused of,” said judge Vera Vukotic.

According to the indictment, Serb forces captured 21-year-old Ivan Sivric, a member of 102nd Odzaci Brigade of the Croatian Defence Council, who was then detained in the Energoinvest factory compound in the village of Kozuhe.

A couple of days later – the exact date was not stated in indictment – Stojanovic, also known as Nesa Chetnik, took Sivric to a place called Djelovacke Bare near the Bosna River.

A grave had already been dug there and Stojanovic fired several shots at Sivric and killed him.

Stojanovic had pleaded not guilty to the crime.

During the trial, he said that he went to war first as a volunteer in Vukovar in Croatia, which was seized by Yugoslav People’s Army troops and Serb paramilitaries in November 1991, and then went to fight in Bosnia in May 1992.

He said the commander of his unit was Sasa Radak, also known as Cetinje. Radak was convicted in 2017 in Belgrade of participating in a massacre at Ovcara Farm after the fall of Vukovar.

Stojanovic said that at the time of the crime in his indictment, he was in Kozuhe and there were Croatian Defence Council prisoners of war there.

But he claimed he never had contact with any of prisoners. He also said that he could have been the victim of mistaken identity, as there was one more person who looked like him, particularly with his distinctive haircut.

Some witnesses testified that during the trial that Stojanovic had what they called a “Cherokee” hairstyle.

Kozuhe resident Miroslav Markovic told the trial that he, Stojanovic and a third person took Sivric by car to the place where the grave had previously been dug. According to Markovic, Stojanovic was the only one who opened fire at the victim.

An exhumation was carried out in the village of Kozuhe in 1998, when it was established that the victim was Sivric.

This is a first-instance verdict and can be appealed.