Conviction overturned for commander of Bosnian Jihad beheaders

Conviction overturned for commander of Bosnian Jihad beheaders

MIKE CORDER - ASSOCIATED PRESS

April 22, 2008 11:52 AM

THE HAGUE, Netherlands-A U.N. appeals panel overturned the murder convictions and reduced the sentence Tuesday of a Bosnian army commander in charge of Muslim fighters who murdered and tortured Bosnian Serbs and Croats in the Balkan wars in 1993.

Enver Hadzihasanovic was originally convicted by the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal in March 2006 of failing to prevent the mujahadeen volunteers from killing two prisoners, and refusing to punish them afterward. One of the prisoners was beheaded, and several other captives were beaten.

But the U.N. court's appeals chamber ruled that the foreigners, many of them veterans of the war against Soviet forces in Afghanistan that ended in 1989, were beyond the control of Hadzihasanovic's 3rd Corps of the regular Bosnian Muslim army.

It also overturned one of his two convictions for failing to prevent or punish the cruel treatment of prisoners held at a music school in the Bosnian town of Zenica in 1993.

The court reduced his sentence from five to 3 1/2 years imprisonment.

"The facts of the case reveal a situation in which the relationship between the El Mujahadeen detachment and the 3rd Corps was not one of subordination," Presiding Judge Fausto Pocar said. "Instead, it was close to overt hostility since the only way to control the detachment was to attack them as though they were a distinct enemy force."

Hadzihasanovic's deputy, Amir Kubura, had one conviction overturned for failing to prevent the mujahadeen from plundering and his sentence cut from 2 1/2 years to two years.

Both men smiled and hugged their attorneys after Tuesday's hour-long hearing. Because of time they served in pretrial detention, both will now go free.

The two were among the highest ranking Muslim officers brought to trial by the war crimes court, which has been criticized in Serbia for prosecuting far more Serbs than members of other ethnic groups.

Their trial marked the first time the Yugoslav tribunal dealt with crimes by the mujahedeen, or holy warriors, who came mainly from north Africa and the Middle East to fight on the Muslim side in the 1992-95 Bosnian war.

Hundreds of volunteers enlisted in the Muslim cause in mid-1992 after Bosnia declared independence from the crumbling Yugoslav federation.

Prosecutors had charged Hadzihasanovic with responsibility for around 200 deaths and sought a 20-year sentence. They recommended a 10-year sentence for Kubura.

But the original trial judges dismissed most charges, ruling that the Bosnian army had little control over the mujahedeen until they were absorbed as an army unit in August 1993.