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WAR CRIMES

Bosnia war crimes trial ends in Stockholm

As the trial of a Swede of Bosnian origin accused of committing war crimes came to a close on Tuesday, the Swedish prosecutor requested eight years in prison.

Published: 23 March 2011 07:56 CET

The trial of 44-year-old Ahmet Makitan, which began in October, ended Tuesday with the defence lawyers’ statements, the Stockholm district court confirmed.

According to news agency TT, the verdict is due on April 8th.

Makitan has been charged with “aggravated war crimes and abduction,” and stands accused of torturing Serb prisoners, including civilians, between May and August 1992 during the war in the former Yugoslavia, court documents showed.

Some 20 witnesses took the stand during the five-month trial.

The accused was 25 at the time and allegedly committed the crimes while working as a guard at the Dretelj detention camp in southern Bosnia near the Neretva river, which divided Serb and Bosnian-Croat forces at the time.

“He should not be charged with war crimes, because he was only a foot soldier and did not know of the overall ethnic cleansing plans,” defence lawyer Ola Salomonsson argued.

“He admitted only (the accusations of) abuse and molestation and those crimes are prescribed,” he said, according to TT.

Makitan, who was born in Bosnia Herzogovina but obtained Swedish nationality in 2006, was arrested at the beginning of January in the northern Swedish town of Sollefteå where he lived with his family.

Sweden opened a probe on the matter in 2008, receiving assistance with the investigation from a number of countries as well as the UN International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

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German court told to retry Rwandan convicted of war crimes

Murwanashyaka during an MDR interview 10 years ago in November 2008. Photo: DPA

The Federal Court of Justice Thursday confirmed the verdict against Musoni. But it found that part of the case against Murwanashyaka was flawed – both in his favour and against.

“The guilty verdict is therefore to be completely annulled, even though the conviction of the accused as a leader of a terrorist organisation was without
legal error per se,” said the court.

Murwanashyaka had been found guilty of abetting five attacks by FDLR rebels
on Congolese settlements in 2008-2009.

But the court said the initial verdict by the higher regional court of Stuttgart did not sufficiently prove that Murwanashyaka's support of at least one of the attacks was premeditated.

The judges ordered the Stuttgart tribunal to take a fresh look at his role in all five attacks.

They also disagreed with the previous decision not to judge the accused for crimes against humanity as well as war crimes.

Musoni was allowed to go free after the ruling because he had already been in pre-trial jail for almost six years and, therefore qualified for conditional release for good behaviour. Murwanashyaka currently remains in jail.

The original verdict in the case, after a trial that lasted more than four years, was at the time hailed as a breakthrough by the United Nations in efforts to bring FDLR commanders living abroad to justice.

The two Rwandans, who have lived in Germany for more than 20 years, were
initially accused of 26 counts of crimes against humanity and 39 counts of war crimes.

But over time that was whittled down to charges related specifically to the killings, in part because the court decided not to further tax the vulnerability of traumatised rape victims or child soldiers by making them appear before the hearing.

The judge back then said the difficulties encountered by the prosecution in the biggest such trial in Germany as well as the length of time the case took had been “unacceptable”.

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