WITHOUT THE KNOWLEDGE OF THE COURT AND PROSECUTOR'S OFFICE OF BiH - Rade Garić transferred to Serbia to serve sentence

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - Rade Garić, a convicted war criminal, was secretly transferred to Serbia yesterday to serve his sentence, N1 has learned. Garić was serving his sentence at the Vojkovići prison by decision of the BiH Ministry of Justice, and as we have learned, he has been allowed to serve his sentence in Serbia.

Neither the Prosecutor's Office nor the BiH Court were consulted in this process, as confirmed to us by multiple sources. The name of Rade Garić is mentioned in several other active investigations in the BiH Prosecutor's Office.

The BiH Ministry of Justice did not respond to our inquiries today, so it remains unclear whether the order for his relocation was signed by Davor Bunoza, the new Minister of Justice, or Josip Grubeša, whom he succeeded.

We also did not receive an explanation as to why Garić was relocated outside of legal procedures.

Otherwise, a former member of the Army of Republika Srpska was definitively sentenced last year to 17 years in prison for crimes against humanity against Bosniaks in the area of Vlasenica in 1992, BiH, and against the people of Srebrenica in 1995.

Garić was sentenced to 20 years in prison in the first-instance verdict on August 16, 2021, but after an appeal, he was acquitted of part of the indictment.

According to the verdict, he was found guilty of persecuting the Bosniak civilian population of the Municipality of Vlasenica through "killings, imprisonment or other severe deprivation of liberty, enforced disappearances of persons, and other inhumane acts of a similar nature committed with the intent of causing great suffering or serious physical or psychological injury or damage to health".

The BiH Court's statement states that Garić committed the crimes from the beginning of April 1992 until the end of that year, as part of a systematic attack by paramilitary, military, and police forces of Republika Srpska, directed against the Bosniak civilian population.

Rade Garić was found guilty of committing crimes "directed against the civilian Bosniak population of the UN protected zone of Srebrenica" from July 6 to the end of August 1995, in his capacity as commander of the intervention platoon within the Vlasenica Brigade of the VRS.

According to the BiH Court's statement, Garić was sentenced for "persecuting the civilian Bosniak population by undertaking incriminating actions qualified as other inhumane acts of a similar nature, committed with the intent of causing great suffering or serious physical or psychological injury or damage to health".

Garić's trial lasted from October 2018. Until the verdict was pronounced, Rade Garić was in custody, which was imposed on him in March 2021.

He obtained Serbian citizenship during the court proceedings.