BOSNIA HERZEGOVINA: Bosnia war crimes court acquits Serb ex-minister, Momcilo Man

Bosnia's war crimes court on Wednesday (July 18) acquitted Momcilo Mandic, the most senior ethnic Serb official indicted by Bosnian authorities, of all charges related to crimes during the 1992-95 war. In a decision that surprised Mandic's lawyers, the court said there was no evidence the justice minister of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic was responsible for war crimes against Bosnian Muslims at several detention camps. Mandic was also cleared of charges of planning and leading an attack by Bosnian Serb police and paramilitary units on a Sarajevo police training centre. Non-Serbs were held in the attack and tortured. "When it comes to prisoners of war and their treatment, which is not disputable, and which was meted out exactly as it was described in the indictment with regards to abuses, killings, torture and similar, it needs to be said that in the factual description of the indictment neither the role of the accused nor other members of military police and civilian authorities, not their participation in the whole matter was necessarily and sufficiently described as that the accused would have possibly been involved in joint criminal enterprise and surely be criminally responsible," Davorin Jukic, chairman of the court council said. Jukic said prosecutors had failed to provide evidence that Mandic was responsible or directly related to persecution, torture and killing of some 150 Bosnian Muslims in detention camps near Sarajevo and in the eastern town of Foca. He said Mandic was acquitted of charges that he attacked the police training centre in Vraca and tried to beat a Muslim to death there. Jukic also said prosecutors were wrong to charge Mandic with violating the Geneva convention. Mandic's lawyers welcomed the decision, saying they believed the court had been under political pressure to find him guilty. Last year Mandic was jailed for five years for abuse of office and fraud at a bank he used to manage. Mandic left Bosnia towards the end of the war and moved to Belgrade where he became a wealthy businessman. He was arrested in Montenegro in 2005 and transferred to Bosnia. His wartime boss Karadzic is still on the run from the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague, which has indicted him twice for genocide.

ITN Source | July 19, 2007

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