The Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) filed an appeal against the verdict acquitting Luka Dragicevic of the crime in Strpci, as well as against the 13-year sentence imposed on the other seven defendants in this case.
The Prosecutor’s Office of BiH, with its appeal, which was sent to the Court of BiH on February 3rd, requests that Dragicevic be declared guilty and punished according to the law, as well as that all the others be sentenced to stricter prison terms, considering the gravity of the crime committed.
Families will be informed
”The Prosecutor’s Office of BiH will inform the families of the injured persons located in the territory of Serbia and Montenegro about the appeal against the first-instance verdict,”it is stated in the statement of the Prosecutor’s Office.
The Court of BiH, after seven full years of trial, in October of last year issued a first-instance verdict in which seven former members of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) were sentenced to a total of 91 years in prison for their participation in the kidnapping of 20 civilians from a train in Strpci on February 27th, 1993, who were killed in the area of Visegrad, and Luka Dragicevic was acquitted of having issued the order to take the civilians away, writes the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN).
Obrad and Novak Poluga, Petko Indjic, Radojica Ristic, Dragan Sekaric, Oliver Krsmanovic and Miodrag Mitrasinovic were each sentenced to 13 years in prison because they participated as co-perpetrators in the murders of 20 civilians taken from a train traveling on the Belgrade-Bar line. With this verdict, Dragicevicwas acquitted of the charge that, as the commander of the Second Podrinje Brigade from Visegrad, he gave the order to take civilians away.
Indjic was convicted in a separate proceeding
The verdict states that the defendants and other members of the armed formation drove a truck to the station in Strpci, where some of them got on the train and, after identification, took out 20 passengers, including the conductor, who were taken by truck to school in Prelovo, where the command of the First Battalion of the Second Podrinje Brigade was located.
In a separate proceeding, the Court of BiH sentenced Boban Indjic to 15 years in prison as the commander of the Intervention Company of the Visegrad Brigade of the VRS for participating in the kidnapping of 20 civilians from a train in Strpci on February 27th, 1993 and their murder in the Visegrad area, Avaz reports.
E.Dz.
