The panel of the Appellate Division of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina /Court/ delivered a second-instance Judgment in the case of Mehmed Alešević on 23 September 2022, dismissing as ill-founded the appeals filed by, respectively, the accused Mehmed Alešević, the accused’s counsel and the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH, and upholding the Judgment of the Court dated 21 February 2022.
Under the first-instance judgment, the accused Mehmed Alešević was found guilty of the criminal offense of War Crime against the Civilian Population under Article 142(1) of the Criminal Code of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia as read with Article 22 thereof.
The Court sentenced the Accused to five (5) years imprisonment. Under the same judgment, the accused Alešević was acquitted of the individual charges as indicated in the acquitting part of the judgment, whereby he would have committed the criminal offense of War Crimes against Prisoners under Article 175(a) of the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina /CC BiH/ as read with Article 180(1) of the CC BiH, taken in conjunction with Article 29 of the CC BiH. Pursuant to Article 283(b) of the Criminal Procedure Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Court dismissed the charge that the accused Alešević, by the acts described, committed the criminal offense of War Crimes against Civilians under Article 173(1)(c) of the CC BiH as read with Article 180(1) of the CC BiH, taken in conjunction with Article 29 of the CC BiH.
The accused Mehmed Alešević has been found guilty because he, during the armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina between members of the 5th Corps of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina /RBiH/, of the one part, and members of the National Defense of the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia, of the other part, in the territory of Cazin, Velika Kladuša and Bužim municipalities, in an improvised prison set up at the HQ of the 505th Bužim Brigade of the 5th Corps of the Army of RBiH quartered at the former hotel Radoč in Bužim, in the period from the beginning of December 1994 until the end of April 1995, as administrative officer in the Military Police of the 505th Bužim Brigade, in concert with other members of the 505th Bužim Brigade of the 5th Corps of the Army of RBiH, acted in contravention of rules of international humanitarian law, violating the provisions of common article 3(1)(a) and (c) of the Geneva Convention relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War.
No appeal is allowed against this judgment.
