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The Appeals Court in Belgrade. Photo: bg.ap.sud.rs
The Appeals Court in Belgrade has quashed the verdict convicting Husein Mujanovic, the commander of a military prison in Hrasnica near Sarajevo during the Bosnian war, of the abuse of Bosnian Serb inmates in 1992, and ordered a retrial.
Mujanovic had been sentenced to ten years in prison in July 2020.
At the appeal hearing in the case in February, his lawyer Dusan Ignjatovic argued that the first-instance procedure had been unfair to his client because Belgrade Higher Court did not accept any of the witnesses proposed by the defence.
“Of all the 24 witnesses we suggested, who have relevant information about it, they denied us everyone and examined all the prosecution witnesses. And then it is clear to you that this is not a fair trial,” Ignjatovic told BIRN at the time.
Explaining its decision to quash the verdict, the Appeals Court backed up Ignjatovic’s claims, saying that the Higher Court “violated the constitution… as well as the provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code” by rejecting all motions for the examination of defence witnesses.
“During the proceedings, the defence proposed that persons who have direct knowledge of the case in question, of which the defendant was found guilty, be examined as witnesses, but the first-instance court did not examine any of the proposed defence witnesses, which according to the Appeals Court raised the question of the quality of the right to defence of the accused in this criminal proceeding, and thus the right to a fair trial,” the Appeals Court said in the verdict issued on February 3 but only published on Friday.
According to the indictment, some 30 Serb prisoners were held at the Hrasnica prison, which was run by the Bosniak-led Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, from July 8 to October 15, 1992.
The prisoners were held in poor conditions and abused. Some of them were beaten in a nearby fallout shelter, and six died as a result of the beatings. Mujanovic was charged with personally beating two prisoners who survived.
Mujanovic was arrested in July 2018 by Serbian police at a border crossing between Bosnia and Serbia. He has been in custody in Serbia ever since.
