ICTY Convicts Two in First Mujahedin Case

In the first Tribunal decision to deal with the actions of Mujahedin soldiers in central Bosnia and Herzegovina, the ICTY Trial Chamber II has found two former Bosnian Muslim army commanders, General Enver Hadzihasanovic and Brigadier Amir Kubura, guilty of war crimes committed against Bosnian Croat and Bosnian Serb civilians during the 1992-95 war. Both men were convicted on a command-responsibility theory, for failing to take necessary and reasonable measures to prevent and/or punish the crimes committed by the Mujahedin:

[T]he Trial Chamber found that Enver Hadzihasanovic exercised effective control over a detachment of such forces. It found that Mujahedin members severely beat and psychologically abused five civilians from the Croatian and Serbian community in Travnik and murdered Dragan Popovic in October 1993 in the Orasac camp. The Trial Chamber found Enver Hadzihasanovic guilty of failing to prevent these crimes.

The Trial Chamber also convicted Enver Hadzihasanovic for failing to take necessary and reasonable measures to punish members of his forces who murdered Mladen Havranek, a Bosnian Croat army prisoner of war, on 5 August 1993. Finally, it found Enver Hadzihasanovic guilty of failing to prevent or punish members of his forces who cruelly treated civilians and prisoners of war in five detention facilities in 1993.

The Trial Chamber convicted Amir Kubura for failing to take necessary and reasonable measures to punish members of his forces who plundered private or public property in the villages of Susanj, Ovnak, Brajkovici and Grahovcici in June 1993. It also convicted him for failing to prevent or punish members of his forces who plundered private or public property in the village of Vares in November 1993.

Despite the multiple convictions, the Tribunal’s sentences were relatively light: five years in jail for Hadzihasanovic, and two-and-a-half years in jail for Kubura (who will soon be freed, because of time he has already spent in detention). The prosecution had requested 20 years for Hadzihasanovic and 10 years for Kubura, but the Tribunal said that prosecutors had failed to convince it that the men had full knowledge of the abuses committed by their subordinates.