The Council of the High Court in Podgorica confirmed the indictment against police officer Zoran Gašović on suspicion of having committed the crime of crime against humanity in 1992 on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
In a press release, the Prosecutor’s Office states that the panel of the High Court in Podgorica confirmed the indictment from June 19 last year in a decision dated September 15 this year.
“The subject of the indictment is that the accused, as a member of the Bosnian Serb civilian police, during the non-international armed conflict between the Army of Republika Srpska and the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the period from early May to mid-December 1992, in the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Sarajevo, Hadžići, in violation of the rules of international law, as part of a wider and systematic attack directed against the civilian population, participated in the commission of murders and carried out enslavement, forced displacement, torture, persecution on religious and ethnic grounds, unlawful imprisonment of persons and other similar inhumane acts, which caused them severe suffering and seriously endangered their health,” the Prosecutor’s Office announced.
As Vijesti writes, the confirmation of the indictment came after the Appellate Court of Montenegro accepted the appeal of the Special State Prosecutor’s Office and reversed the decision of the Higher Court in Podgorica, when in the war crime case against the defendant Gašović, part of the evidentiary material that came from the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals was excluded from the case file.
The SDT then announced that the decision of the Higher Court in Podgorica, issued on April 15 of this year, was reversed, as the Appellate Court rejected as unfounded the proposal of the defense counsel of the defendant Gašović to exclude from the case file as legally invalid evidence: minutes – statements, minutes of hearings of citizens, minutes of hearings of witnesses, statements, official notes and transcripts of hearings of witnesses, which were collected by the competent authorities of Bosnia and Herzegovina. This evidence, which the Higher Court removed from the case file by the decision, was delivered to the Special State Prosecutor’s Office by the Prosecutor’s Office of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals.
Based on this evidence, among other things, the Special State Prosecutor’s Office filed an indictment.
According to the verdict of the Hague Tribunal, war crimes were committed in Hadžići, during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992, where around 700 people were forcibly held for months in camps in a sports hall and garage.
According to the SDT indictment, Gašović participated in the mass persecution of Bosniaks and Croats from Hadžići, the imprisonment of people in a concentration camp and the deportation of around 200 Bosniaks to the Lukavica barracks, of whom around 60 were shot.
Gašović was arrested at the end of last year.
