THE HAGUE: A United Nations court on Monday granted early release to a former Bosnian Croat defense minister convicted of war crimes, including murdering and deporting Muslims in Bosnia in the early 1990s.
The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, based in The Hague, ordered Bruno Stojic released from detention in Austria to return to Croatia.
The 70-year-old had behaved well in prison, admitted the gravity of his crimes and was unlikely to reoffend, said presiding judge Graciela Gatti Santana in her decision.
“The gravity of Stojic’s crimes is high and weighs against granting early release. However, there are a number of positive factors that weigh in favor of early release,” she noted.
She cited “acceptance of personal responsibility for the crimes,” “expression of regret for the consequences” of his actions, “very good behavior in prison” and “good prospects of successful reintegration.”
Stojic was sentenced to 20 years in jail in 2013 along with former Bosnian Croat President Jadranko Prlic and four others.
He had already surrendered to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in April 2004. His sentence was due to expire in September 2027.
In 2013, when convicting Stojic and the others, judge Jean-Claude Antonetti said they had aimed to establish reunification with Croatia.
To achieve that, they wanted to “modify the ethnic composition” of the land claimed by Bosnian Croats.
This, Antonetti said, they achieved by force, intimidation and terror “by conducting mass arrests of Bosnian Muslims who were then either murdered, beaten, sexually assaulted, robbed of their property and otherwise abused.”
The bloody 1992-1995 war in Bosnia mainly pitted Bosnian Muslims against Bosnian Serbs, but for a period also saw vicious fighting between Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats. Some 100,000 people lost their lives in the conflict.
In 1992, the Bosnian Croats established a Croatian entity, known as the HVO, which was both an army and a government. In August 1993, they proclaimed the Croatian “state” of Herceg-Bosna in Bosnia.
Stojic was encouraged to “continue, even following his early release, to reflect on his conduct and responsibility and to consider concrete steps he could take to facilitate reconciliation,” according to the court statement.
