prijava
BELGRADE/SARAJEVO, November 15 (FENA) - The Belgrade High Court convicted former Bosnian Serb Army soldier Joja Plavanjac of killing 11 people at a prison in Bosanska Krupa in Bosnia in August 1992 and his fellow ex-serviceman Zdravko Narančić of helping him.
The Belgrade High Court on Friday sentenced Joja Plavanjac to 15 years in prison and Zdravko Narančić to seven years for their roles in the killings of 11 civilian detainees at a prison in Bosanska Krupa in Bosnia on August 3, 1992.
Plavanjac was convicted of killing the prisoners and Narančić of helping him.
According to the indictment, the civilians were detained at a military prison that was set up in the Petar Kočić elementary school in the town of Bosanka Krupa.
Narančić, a member of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Eleventh Krupa Light Infantry Brigade, was a guard at the prison and let fellow soldier Joja Plavanjac into the school armed with a machine gun.
Plavanjac was initially looking for a Serb man called Predrag Praštalo, who allegedly killed his mother, but as Praštalo had already been taken into custody in Banja Luka, Plavanjac killed 11 Bosniak civilians who were being detained at the school.
That evening, Narančić assisted in the removal of the dead victims from the school. Their bodies were exhumed in 2006 from a mass grave in Zvečarka in the Sanski Most municipality.
The DNA analysis preliminary identified the identity of eleven persons and identified the victims as Kaltak Emsud, Kaltak Enes, Kaltak Nezir, Kaltak Ferid, Kaltak Rasim, Alijagić Edin, Alijagić Fadil, Omić Mirsad, Sejdić Tofik, Ćehajić Ismet and Nasić Rasim. To date, the 12th victim found in that mass grave has not been identified.
Both Plavanjac and Narančić claimed that Plavanjac’s father, Lazo, killed the prisoners.
Plavanjac and Narančić claimed that on the day of the killings, Plavanjac and his father Lazo came to the school and Lazo Plavanjac insisted on seeing the man who killed his wife.
Narančić let them in but told them that Predrag Praštalo had already been transferred to Banja Luka.
Joja Plavanjac and Narančić went to an office to confirm this. While they were doing this, they heard shooting, ran out and saw that Lazo Plavanjac had shot the prisoners, they claimed.
But presiding judge Mirjana Ilić said that the court did not accept the claims because they were “contrary to witnesses’ testimonies in which no one mentioned Lazo Plavanjac in connection with these events”.
Lazo Plavanjac died in 1999.
The case against the two defendants was transferred from Bosnia and Herzegovina and the indictment was issued in Serbia in December 2017.
Friday’s verdict was the first-instance judgment and can be appealed, BIRN reports.
(FENA) S. R.
