This decision is significant for my client, because if nothing else, it was years and years of trial. It was ten years of painful testimony and going through the courts, and she finally has the satisfaction that everything was not in vain and that she was not completely forgotten.
This is how Nedzla Sehic, a lawyer for a rape victim during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), comments for Radio Free Europe (RSE) about the proposed decision of the State Ministry for Human Rights and Refugees in which BiH should pay around 15.000 euros in compensation to her client.
Mrs. A, as she is referred to under a pseudonym by the competent ministry, could be the first victim of war rape to whom BiH will pay compensation.
The payment was ordered by the United Nations (UN)Committee against Torture in 2019. This decision was made after the Court of BiH ruled in 2015 that the perpetrator of the rape, Slavko Savic, a member of the Army of the Republika Srpska (RS), should pay the victim 15.340 euros within 90 days.
Given that Savic did not do this, because he had no property, the rape victim complained to the UN Committee against Torture. The case was initiated in 2017, and the final decision was made two years later.
For the crime of rape in 1993 in the Sarajevo municipality of Vogosca, Savic was sentenced to eight years in prison.
The competent ministry told RSE that their proposed decision could be adopted by the BiH Council of Ministers already at the first next session.
“BiH is obliged, in addition to material reparation and to officially apologize to the victim of war rape, as a state, to provide health and psychological assistance and a series of systemic measures with the aim of implementing the UN Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Punishments or Procedures,” explainedSehic, Radio Slobodna Evropa reports.
E.Dz.
