The Appellate Panel of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina confirmed the first-instance verdict by which seven former members of the Army of the Republika Srpska (VRS) were sentenced to 91 years in prison for participating in the kidnapping of 20 civilians from a train in Štrpci on February 27, 1993, who were killed in the Višegrad area, while Luka Dragičević was acquitted of the charge that he had issued an order for the removal of civilians.
Miodrag Stojanović, Dragičević’s defense attorney, Petko Pavlović, Obrad Poluga’s defense attorney, and Slaviša Prodanović, Oliver Krsmanović’s defense attorney, confirmed for Detektor that the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina fully confirmed the first-instance verdict.
Obrad and Novak Poluga, Petko Inđić, Radojica Ristić, Dragan Šekarić, Oliver Krsmanović and Miodrag Mitrašinović were each sentenced to 13 years in prison by the first-instance verdict because they participated as co-perpetrators in the murders of 20 civilians taken from a train traveling on the Belgrade-Bar line, while Dragičević was acquitted of the charge that, as the commander of the Second Podrinj Brigade from Višegrad, he gave the order to take the civilians away.
The verdict states that the accused and other members of the armed formation drove a truck to the station in Štrpci, where some of them got on the train and, after identification, took out 20 passengers, among whom was the conductor of the train, who were taken by truck to school in Prelovu, where the command of the First Battalion of the Second Podrinj Brigade was located.
They ordered the civilians to enter the school hall and take off their clothes, after which they beat them, tied their hands with wire and took them, covered in blood, by truck to the demolished house of Rasima Polje in Mušići, where they were shot dead, and their bodies were then dumped in Drina. Later, the remains of only four victims were found and identified in Lake Perućac.
During the first-instance verdict, it was stated that Milan Lukić participated in the liquidation of 18 captured civilians, and that two of them were killed during an attempt to escape, of which one was killed by the convicted Nebojša Ranisavljević, and the other by an unknown soldier.
Lukić was sentenced to life imprisonment by the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia for the crimes committed in Visegrad, and in early 2020 the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina brought an indictment against him for the crimes in Štrpci, which he refused to accept while serving his sentence in Estonia, while Ranisavljević is on 15 year of imprisonment sentenced in Montenegro, Fena reports.
