prijava
SARAJEVO, January 15 (FENA) - Josip Krešić, a wartime Croat Defense Council fighter who was on trial for crimes against civilian prisoners in the Stolac area in 1993, became the third defendant in the case to die before the final verdict.
Defendant Josip Krešić has died and was buried last week in Stolac, where his alleged wartime crimes were committed, his lawyer Nenad Gvozdić told BIRN.
He is the third defendant in the case to have died before a verdict was handed down, after the deaths of former co-defendants Mirko Raguž and Ivica Marković.
In October last year, the Bosnian state court separated the case against Josip Krešić from the case against his remaining co-defendants Mile Pazin and Vid Krešić because of his illness.
Josip and Vid Krešić, both former members of the Croat Defense Council, were accused of mentally and physically mistreating civilians who were being detained at the Koštana Hospital in Stolac.
Pazin was charged with illegally arresting and physically and mentally mistreating women, children and several men who were held prisoner at the Branko Šotra school in Crnići and then transferred to detention facilities in Đulici and Kaplan Mahala.
Around 20 war crimes indictees have died in Bosnia and Herzegovina over the past five years before the final verdicts in their trials, while around ten other cases are at a standstill due to defendants’ poor health.
(FENA) S. R.
