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Stevanovic: Fundamental Revision of Verdict Sought

Miladin Stevanovic

09 November 2009  The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina presents an appeal to the first-instance verdict acquitting Miladin Stevanovic of all charges of genocide in Srebrenica in July 1995.

The State Prosecution filed the appeal on the basis of violation of the Criminal Code and wrongly determined facts. It called on the Appellate Chamber to revise the first-instance verdict and pronounce the indictee guilty or revoke the verdict and order a retrial.
 
“The Prosecution believes that the verdict must be fundamentally changed, because it expressed all the things that are open to dispute. Many facts have been determined in a correct manner, but wrong conclusions have been drawn,” Prosecutor Ibro Bulic said. He asked the Court to order the indictee into custody.
 
In July 2008 Miladin Stevanovic was acquitted by a first-instance verdict of all charges that he participated in the genocide committed in Srebrenica in 1995. As per a decision rendered by the Trial Chamber he was immediately released from custody.
 
The indictment charges Stevanovic, as a member of the Second Special Police Squad from Sekovici, with having participated, on July 12 and 13, in guarding the road between Bratunac and Konjevic polje and capturing men from Srebrenica. It further alleges that, in the evening hours of July 13, more than 1,000 Srebrenica residents were taken to Kravica Agricultural Cooperative, where they were shot. The Prosecution contends that the indictee took part in this.
 
Bulic said that the first-instance Chamber wrongly drew conclusions pertaining to the indictee’s presence in Kravica in the early afternoon on July 13, 1995, because it accepted his statement that he arrived at the cooperative at about 4 p.m. on that day and went straight to the Dispensary in Bratunac, accompanying the body of Krsto Dragicevic, a killed policeman.
 
The Prosecution claims that the material evidence confirms that Dragicevic’s body was brought to the Dispensary at about 6 p.m.
 
“The Chamber’s statement that Miladin Stevanovic was not present at the crime scene when the execution was carried out is not viable. The importance of evidence has to be assessed with due attention. It must be observed that the Trial Chamber made a mistake when it acquitted him of all charges for some other crime at least, if not genocide. The Court is bound by the crime qualification. It could have sentenced Stevanovic for crime against humanity,” Bulic said.
 
The Defence of Miladin Stevanovic argues that the Court correctly and completely determined the facts and concluded that the indictee did not commit the crimes of which he was charged.
 
Appellate Chamber Chairman Tihomir Lukes said the Court would render its decision “within the legally set time-frame”.