War criminal Rade Garic was transferred to Serbia to serve his prison sentence, which was approved by the Minister of Justice of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).
He was transferred from BiH to the Republic of Serbia two days ago with the aim of further serving the prison sentence imposed on him in BiH.
Garic was sentenced to a prison term of 17 (seventeen) years according to the judgment of the Court of BiH from 2021 for war crimes committed in the area of Vlasenica and Srebrenica in July 1995.
On the basis of the European Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons, he submitted an application for transfer to the Republic of Serbia in order to, as a citizen of Serbia, continue serving the prison sentence imposed in BiH. For that, it was necessary for him to receive an appropriate verdict in Serbia according to the laws of that country, where he received the same amount of prison sentence that was imposed by the Court of BiH.
Based on the aforementioned verdict, the Minister of Justice of BiH issued a Decision dated December 15th, 2022, which allowed the transfer of a convicted person from BiH to the Republic of Serbia.
”Therefore, the Decision in question was adopted in accordance with both the provisions of the European Convention on the Transfer of Sentenced Persons, to which BiH is a signatory, as well as the provisions of the Law on International Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters (Chapter VIII – Articles 79 – 82), and the amount of the sentence imposed by the competent court in the Republic of Serbia is the same as the prison sentence imposed by the Court of BiH,” the Ministry of Justice of BiH stated.
In particular, they note that the said Law does not provide for the obligation of the Minister of Justice of BiH to seek the opinion or consent of the competent court in BiH that issued a final judgment, but only gives him, not explicitly, the discretionary right to assess whether there is an obvious disparity in the judgments pronounced by the state of imposition and the state of serving the sentence, and in this sense make an appropriate decision.
“Please note, each country renders a verdict in accordance with its criminal legislation, and in this sense, the amount of the sentence imposed by the country serving the sentence does not have to fully correspond to the amount of the sentence imposed by the court of the country of sentencing”, they state.
Former Deputy Minister of Justice Nezir Pivic said that he believes that appeasing Garic is “contrary to international and domestic law, but in accordance with the policies and political goals of HDZ and SNSD”.
He states that there is a new abuse of state institutions and recalled that Serbia has never extradited Novak Djukic to BiH, which is why he believes that Garic should not have been allowed to go to Serbia either, Klix.ba reports.
E.Dz.
