The Supreme Court of Republika Srpska has scheduled an appeal session for June 12 in the case of Ilije Eleza, who was sentenced to eight years in prison by the first-instance verdict for a crime committed in 1992 in the Foča area.
Lawyer Slaviša Prodanović told Detektor that appeals against the verdict were filed by the defense and the District Public Prosecutor’s Office in Trebinje.
“We appealed on all the grounds provided by law, due to the wrongly established factual situation, due to the violation of the criminal law and the decision on the criminal sanction”, said Prodanović.
He stated that the Trebinje District Public Prosecutor’s Office complained about the amount of the sentence.
By the first-instance verdict of the District Court in Trebinje, Elez was found guilty of participating with Neđo Golubović, who died in 1998, in the murder of four Bosniak civilians in the area of Miljevina.
According to the verdict, Elez and Golubović, armed with an automatic rifle, drove a Lada Niva in front of the houses of the victims Ahmet Ramović, Halil Hrbinić aka Muriz, Hamda Muhović and Rama Ramović, whom they illegally deprived of their liberty, drove them to the location of Mitra’s spring and shot them dead. Their bodies were later found and exhumed in 1999.
In the explanation of the verdict, it was stated that the Prosecution failed to offer evidence for the actual act of killing the victims, but the fact that the witnesses heard gunshots from the direction in which the victims were taken led to the conclusion of a cause-and-effect relationship between the two events. Among the aggravating circumstances, the Court appreciated the fact that it was the death of four civilians, one of whom was a minor with developmental disabilities.
The Supreme Court of Republika Srpska will consider the appeals at the hearing scheduled for June 12.
