Court sentences Dusko Zoric to 15 years in prison for involvement in a Bosnian Serb Army assault that killed several civilians in Zecovi near Prijedor in July 1992.
Prijedor. Photo: BIRN.
Bosnia’s state court on Monday found wartime Bosnian Serb Army soldier Dusko Zoric guilty in a first-instance verdict of crimes against humanity, ruling that he killed five civilians during an attack on the village of Zecovi near Prijedor on July 23, 1992.
The verdict said Zoric had pointed a rifle at a group of civilians, cursed one of them and then opened fired on him – then shot and killed four more of them.
Judge Saban Maksumic said witness statements proved that Zoric, a wartime member of the Rasavacka Company of the Bosnian Serb Army’s 43rd Prijedor Motorised Brigade, committed the crime.
Maksumic recalled that the prosecution had charged Zoric with killing 13 civilians, but the court, based on the evidence, determined that he had only killed five. “The others were not in the group of civilians killed by the accused,” said Maksumic.
He was also acquitted of two counts in the indictment, which concerned crimes committed in the hamlet of Gradina on July 25, 1992. “The chamber could not establish beyond reasonable doubt the participation of Dusko Zoric in this part [of the indictment] and acquits him,” Maksumic said.
In determining the 15-year sentence, the court took into account as aggravating circumstances the reckless way in which the crime was committed, as well as Zoric’s previous convictions.
As mitigating circumstances, it took into account his relatively young age at the time of the crime and the fact that he has a family.
Zoric’s trial began in 2015, in a case in which he was accused together with five others. Proceedings against him were separated from the others in 2022, after he was arrested in Germany for other offences. Following his extradition from Germany, his trial continued.
The five other defendants were sentenced to a total of 59 years in prison under a final verdict in September 2024.
Monday’s verdict can be appealed.