After the second-instance verdict of the Court of Appeal in Belgrade, according to which Husein Mujanović was sentenced to four and a half years, he was released home today.
As it was confirmed for N1, Mujanović was sentenced to 4.5 years, which expire tomorrow. Given that he has been in custody in Belgrade since 2018, he was released today.
He is currently on his way to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The Appeals Court in Belgrade announced last Thursday that it has handed down a second-instance verdict sentencing Husein Mujanović to four-and-a-half years in prison for abusing Serbs who were held at a Bosnian Army military prison in Hrasnica near Sarajevo in 1992.
The court said on its website that the verdict partially upholding an appeal filed by Mujanovic’s defense was handed down on December 22.
Under the first-instance verdict in May last year, Mujanović had been given ten years in prison, after a retrial was held because a previous verdict convicting him was quashed on appeal.
The court said in its announcement that Mujanović was found guilty in his capacity as manager of the military detention facility of having “treated the detained civilians in an inhumane manner”.
It said that he inflicted suffering by holding the prisoners in poor conditions, locked in garages that were partitioned into two cells, without windows, beds or other furniture, from July 8 to October 15, 1992.
It also said that the civilian prisoners received minimal quantities of food per day – one or maximum two meals, which consisted of 12 or 13 spoons of liquid and a slice of bread per person, so they were hungry and thirsty all the time.
However, the court found that there was no evidence that he carried out the unlawful detention of 30 Serb civilians during the period described in the indictment.
It further found that it could not be concluded on the basis of the evidence presented that Mujanovic gave the order to beat and torture the detainees or that he inflicted bodily injuries on two of them.
In his initial trial, Mujanović was also sentenced to ten years in prison in July 2020. But in February 2021, the Court of Appeals quashed the verdict and ordered a retrial.
Mujanović was arrested at a border crossing between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia in July 2018. He has been held in detention in Serbia since then, BIRN reports.
