The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) has rejected a request for the early release of Milan Lukic, who was sentenced by the Hague Tribunal to life in prison for crimes against humanity committed in Visegrad.
According to the decision of the Mechanism, Lukic requested early release, as well as parole. The reasons for parole, among other things, according to the decision, are the fact that serving his sentence in Estonia for eight years prevented him from seeing his “children from Serbia” and that it poses problems for his “young children from Europe” to visit him, which he says violates his human rights.
MICT President Judge Carmel Agius rejected Lukic’s request, explaining in the decision that he believes that Lukic’s mere references to “parole” are unconvincing, without a specific explanation, and they changed the nature of his request. Agius believes that Lukic should only be considered to be seeking early release.
”In the request, Lukic also files a series of submissions challenging the final verdict against him, claiming his innocence and that he was charged with a crime he did not commit,” Agius states.
President Aguis clarified that his predecessor had decided that persons sentenced to life imprisonment could be considered eligible for early release.
”In deciding on Lukic’s previous request, my predecessor determined that “the Mechanism will consider Lukic eligible for early release after serving more than two-thirds of his 45 years, which is more than 30 years of his sentence”,” Agius adds.
He added that his predecessor had already set Lukic’s eligibility threshold for more than 30 years and that he did not intend to deviate from that decision.
”Considering that Lukic has served only about 17 years of his life sentence, he still does not meet the conditions for considering early release,” stated Agius in his decision.
He also added that in July 2021, he received information from Estonia about Lukic’s health condition, but these details were not made public in the decision.
Referring to human rights violations, Agius said that he and his predecessor had taken Lukic’s family circumstances into account when deciding on his other claims, and concluded, among other things, that “while travel can be expensive and inconvenient, this difficulty does not reach the level of violating the right to maintain family ties.”, Detektor writes.
