prijava
SARAJEVO, February 5 (FENA) - Former BiH Territorial Defense fighter Izet Arifović, who was being tried for murdering three Serb civilians in the Srebrenica and Bratunac areas of Bosnia in 1992, has died.
Izet Arifović, a former Bosnian Territorial Defense fighter who was sentenced to ten years in prison under a first-instance verdict by the Bosnian state court for killing Serb civilians, died on Monday, his defense lawyer told BIRN BiH.
Arifović was found guilty last September of murdering two civilians who had been captured in the village of Zalazje in the Srebrenica area on July 12, 1992, and killing another civilian in the village of Ratkovići, near Bratunac, on June 21, 1992.
The court found his co-defendant Suad Smajlović guilty of mutilating the bodies of the dead Serbs by firing his gun at them, but he was acquitted of participating in the murders.
A third defendant, Amir Salihović, was acquitted of unlawfully arresting nine Serbs after a military operation in Zalazje on July 12, 1992 and taking them to an unknown place, after which they disappeared.
The arrests of the three defendants in 2016 were welcomed by Serb war victims’ groups, who often accuse the Bosnian judicial authorities of not targeting perpetrators of crimes against Serbs.
But the arrests angered Bosniak veterans and war victims’ associations, who argued that the prosecution should prioritize cases against Serb perpetrators of the 1995 genocide, when more than 7,000 men and boys from Srebrenica were killed.
The proceedings against Smajlovic and Salihović will continue.
(FENA) S. R.
