Blagojević: The entire verdict against Novalić, Solak, and Hodžić should have been overturned

(Patria) - The Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina granted the appeal of Fikret Hodžić, who was finally sentenced to five years in prison for abuse of office during the procurement of ventilators during the coronavirus pandemic, and the legal entity F. H. Srebrena malina, and decided to return the case to the Court of BiH to rectify the violation of the right to a fair trial.

The Constitutional Court announced that a violation of the right to a fair trial was determined for Hodžić and the company Srebrena malina, specifically in the part of the contested verdict that ruled on their objection that they were unaware of the charges against them.

Milan Blagojević, a professor of constitutional law, points out that the verdict should not have been overturned only in relation to Hodžić and the company Srebrena malina, due to the violation of the right to a fair trial, but it should have also been overturned and the case returned for retrial in relation to former federal Prime Minister Fadil Novalić and former Director of the Federal Civil Protection Administration Fahrudin Solak, due to the violation of the same constitutional and convention right.

- Indeed, a careful analysis of the first-instance guilty verdict in this case shows that the verdict contains internal contradictions, both in the operative part itself and between the operative part and the reasoning of that verdict, regarding the decisive facts of the case, and this applies to all defendants and the actions they were accused of.

- In such a case, a violation of the right to a fair trial inevitably occurs and has occurred to the detriment of all defendants, and therefore the Constitutional Court of BiH should have overturned both the first-instance and second-instance verdicts in this case and returned the case for retrial in relation to all defendants, in order to rectify the shortcomings that burdened the first-instance verdict in the retrial and thereby enable a fair trial and a lawful verdict for all defendants, Blagojević stated for Oslobođenje.

By the verdict of the Court of BiH, Novalić was sentenced to four years in prison, Solak to six, and the owner of the company F. H. Srebrena malina to five years in prison for abuses during the procurement of ventilators during the coronavirus pandemic. Former Minister of Finance Jelka Miličević was acquitted of the charges.

The company “F. H. Srebrena malina” was found responsible for possessing illegally acquired property and fined 200,000 KM.