Women and Justice: Court: Sudom Bosne i Hercegovine (Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina)

In the summer of 1992, during an assault on the non-Serb civilian population of Foča in the early months of the Bosnian War, Radovan Stanković, a member of the Republika Srpska Army, established a small detention center for women at an apartment known as “The Brothel.” He and others brought at least nine non-Serb females, most of whom were minors, to the apartment and detained them there. Between August and November 1992, Stanković repeatedly raped one woman and her underage sister and incited other soldiers who visited the apartment to rape the detainees. In addition, Stanković forced the victims to perform physical labor, including cooking for the soldiers, washing the soldiers’ uniforms, and bathing the soldiers. In 2002, Stanković was arrested by the NATO peacekeeping force, KFOR, and transferred to the ICTY. The ICTY referred Stanković’s case to the Court of BiH in 2005. One year later, the Court of BiH convicted Stanković of Crimes against Humanity (enslavement, imprisonment, torture, and rape) under Article 172(1) of the Criminal Code of BiH and sentenced him to sixteen years imprisonment. In 2007, a panel of the Appeals Division increased the prison term to twenty years. Stanković appealed his sentence, which the ICTY and The Hague Court of Appeal upheld. This case is notable because it was the first time the ICTY referred a case to a court of national jurisdiction.

Second instance verdict available in English here.

In 2007, the Court of BiH found Radmilo Vuković, a member of the Republika Srpska Army, guilty of War Crimes against Civilians under Article 173(1) of the Criminal Code of BiH for raping a Bosnian woman at least six times between June and August 1992, the early months of the Bosnian War. In 2008, a panel of the Appellate Division acquitted Vuković of these charges, finding the testimonies of the claimant and her sister to be inconsistent and thus not credible. First, the Court noted factual inconsistencies between the testimony of the claimant and her sister (e.g., the date of the first assault, whether the claimant told her mother of the assault). Second, the Court found the testimonies of the claimant and her sister were inconsistent with prior statements they had given in 1994 and 2001. Third, the Court noted that two defense witnesses testified that Vuković and the claimant were cohabiting partners engaged in an extramarital affair before the Bosnian War (however, the claimant denied any relationship). Lastly, the Court questioned why the claimant did not obtain an abortion to terminate the pregnancy resulting from the alleged rape once she was in safe territory. This case is notable because of the demanding standard set by the court regarding the testimony of rape victims: “The testimony of the injured party must not raise any suspicion as to its exactness and truthfulness, credibility and integrity of the witness exactly because the act of rape, as a rule, is never attended by a witness who might decisively support the testimony of the injured party.” This case is also notable because the Court considered the claimant’s decision to not have an abortion to be evidence that a rape had not occurred.

Second instance verdict available in English here.

In September 1992, during the Bosnian War, the Army of BiH attacked Serb houses in the village of Džepi. During this assault, Ćerim Novalić and an unidentified soldier entered a home to see if the couple was hiding Serbs. While the unidentified soldiers interrogated the husband about his neighbors of Serb ethnicity, Novalić forced the wife into an upstairs room and raped her. In 2010, the Court of BiH found Novalić guilty of a War Crime against a Civilian under Article 173(1) of the CC BiH and sentenced him to seven years imprisonment. The following year, a panel of the Appellate Division of the Court of BiH revised Novalić’s conviction, finding him guilty under Article 142(1) of the Criminal Code of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, the law in effect at the time of Novalić’s crime. The Appellate Panel considered the “extremely humiliating manner” in which Novalić raped the victim – her underage children and mother-in-law were in an adjacent room and her husband was downstairs – and increased his sentence to eight years and six months imprisonment. This is the upper-end of the typical prison sentence mandated by the Court of BiH for one count of rape during the Bosnian War.

Second revised verdict available in English here.

Between 1992 and 1995 during the Bosnian War, Veselin Vlahović a member of the Serbian paramilitary forces, committed various crimes against humanity against the civilian non-Serb population of Sarajevo, including murder, rape, physical and mental abuse, robbery, and enforced disappearance. His crimes were so horrific that he was known by victims as the “Monster of Grbavica.” In 2010, Vlahović was arrested in Spain and extradited to BiH. In 2013, the Court of BiH found Vlahović guilty of sixty different crimes against humanity, including 35 murders and 11 rapes, as well as torture, imprisonment, and looting. He was sentenced to forty-five years imprisonment. In 2014, the Court of BiH acquitted Vlahović of one of the 60 counts of the indictment and reduced his prison sentence to 42 years. Notably, Vlahović’s original prison sentence of 45 years was the maximum possible penalty and is the longest sentence handed down by the Bosnian war crimes court.

Second instance verdict available in English here.