prijava
SARAJEVO, June 4 (FENA) - The acquittal of Naser Orić, the Bosnian Army’s former commander in Srebrenica, has been quashed and he will be retried for allegedly killing three Bosnian Serb prisoners of war in 1992.
The appeals chamber of Bosnia’s state court has overturned the first-verdict acquitting Naser Orić and his subordinate Sabahudin Muhić and ordered a retrial, the prosecution confirmed to BIRN on Monday, BIRN reports.
Orić’s defense lawyer Lejla Čović said she had not received any notification from the court about its decision yet.
The state court in October 2017 acquitted Orić and former Bosnian Army soldier Muhić of killing three Serb prisoners of war in the Bratunac and Srebrenica area.
The prosecution had alleged that Orić, who was a commander of Bosnian Army territorial defense units, and Muhić, who was his subordinate, killed the Serb captives in the villages of Zalazje, Lolići and Kunjerac in 1992.
But the court ruled that the prosecution failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Orić and Muhić committed the killings.
Last month, the state prosecution asked for the first-instance verdict to be overturned and a retrial ordered, alleging substantial violations of criminal proceedings, as well as incompletely and incorrectly determined facts.
The defense argued however that the prosecution’s appeal was “confusing, unclear and incomprehensible”.
The trial was highly controversial because Orić is seen as a hero by many Bosniaks for his role in defending Srebrenica in the years before the 1995 massacres, while some Serbs have claimed that the charges against him should have been more severe.
Before the trial started, the defense asked the UN tribunal in The Hague to order a halt to the proceedings against Orić, arguing that he had already been tried for and acquitted of war crimes in Srebrenica by the Hague court and should not stand trial for the same crimes twice.
The Hague Tribunal rejected the request, with the judge saying that “the murder charges in the Bosnian indictment fundamentally differ from the murder charges in the Hague indictment with respect to the alleged victims and the nature, time and location of the alleged crime”.
(FENA) S. R.
