The BiH court did not consider the case of a Bosniak militant who raped a pregnant Serbian woman
The public of Republika Srpska is shocked by the decision of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina to reject charges against BiH Army militant Adem Kostjerevac, who raped and tortured his Serb neighbor.
This was reported by Politika, a PolitNavigator correspondent reports.
The chairman of the judicial panel in the case of a suspect in the rape of a Serbian woman, Bosnian Mira Smailović, explained the court’s decision not to consider the case as “procedural shortcomings.” In defense of this verdict, she stated that these shortcomings arose “during the investigation” carried out in the United States, where Kostjerevac was arrested and then extradited to BiH.
“Due to omissions in the investigation, the BiH prosecutor’s office was unable to file an indictment, and the judge who conducted the pre-trial proceedings was unable to confirm it,” Smajilovic said, adding that the application for the hearing of Kostjerevac’s case dated December 9, 2014 in the United States “cannot be be considered an interrogation record."
Organizations of Republika Srpska veterans and the Commonwealth of Women War Victims announced their readiness to hold protests in front of the court of Bosnia and Herzegovina “if the accused of raping a pregnant Serbian woman is not convicted in the second instance.”
“It is incredible, what reasons does the judge in Sarajevo have and what legal procedures does she cite as justification for the release of a villain who raped the victim several times and killed her child in the womb? – commented on the incident, the chairman of the Commonwealth of Women Victims of War, Božica Zivković Railić. “The decision of the BiH Court represents the burial alive of both this victim and of all the women of our Commonwealth who have survived violence.”
Let us recall that in March last year, US St. Louis judge Patricia Cohen decided to proceed with the extradition of Bosniak Adem Kostjerevac to Bosnian justice. The 58-year-old former rapist and militant has lived in the United States for the past seventeen years with his wife and five adult children, thanks to the fact that Washington at one time granted citizenship to the Bosniaks under a simplified scheme, as “victims of genocide.”
The episode of Kostjerevac's crime came to light after his victim, a Serbian woman, testified as a witness at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague. After which the Bosnian prosecutor's office opened a criminal case against him in 2015, and in 2017 made a request for his extradition to the United States.
According to the case file, the crime occurred in 1992, when Muslim military forces took the village where his Serbian victim lived, who was Kostjerevec's neighbor and the wife of his classmate. Moreover, at that time she was pregnant. Militants of the so-called “military police” captured her, placed her in a basement, where they abused her and raped her repeatedly. As a result, the woman had a miscarriage, and when she was exchanged in 1993, she weighed only 36 kilograms.
Let us recall that earlier the BiH Court acquitted Edhem Godinjak, Medaris Saric and Mirko Bunoza, accused of killing and torturing civilians and prisoners of war in Trnovo - from May 1992 to July 1993.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.