Letter to the President of France: Help extradite Visegrad war criminal Radomir Šušnjar to Bosnia and Herzegovina

The president of the Association “Woman-Victim of War” sent a letter today to the President of France, Francois Hollande, which the Patria news agency transmits in full.

Dear Mr. President,

On June 13 and 14, 1992, in Visegrad, Bosnia and Herzegovina, more than 60 people, Bosniaks, were arrested and locked in a building on Pionirska Street in Visegrad. These were predominantly women, elderly people and children, including a two-day-old baby.

A group of Serbian paramilitary forces under the leadership of Milan Lukić (who was later sentenced to life imprisonment before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, as was Sredoje Lukić to 27 years in prison) threw incendiary bombs into the building, and before that they nailed shut every possible access to the building.

 Some of the victims who tried to escape were killed. All others perished in the inferno, except for eight survivors. We are those survivors and the parents and families of the victims who unfortunately lost their lives. The man accused of nailing the doors shut and starting the fire is named Radomir Šušnjar.

He lives in France, near Paris. He denies all responsibility and refuses to stand trial. Bosnia and Herzegovina has requested his extradition for crimes against humanity, but the prosecutor's office of the Paris Court of Appeal is against such a qualification: it considers, since the acts were committed before the entry into force of the French law on crimes against humanity from 1994, that the extradition should be conducted under the angle of general national law.

This is unacceptable to us, especially because such a thing comes from France.

First of all, this case is not a case of murder under general criminal law, but the deliberate death of women, babies, and the elderly, solely because they were Muslims within the framework of a systematic policy of ethnic cleansing carried out by Serbian separatists in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In international law, this is called crimes against humanity and they are imprescriptible, regardless of the date under French law.

Furthermore, this is also happening because France did not make sufficient efforts during the war in Bosnia to convince the international community to cooperate for the purpose of repressing crimes against humanity and to adopt, on May 25, 1993, UN Security Council Resolution 827 establishing the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, which obliges all states to cooperate in the repression of these crimes.

Today, impunity threatens us if France considers that it is not bound by this obligation and if it analyzes these monstrous crimes, committed during wartime, as ordinary acts of general national law, which become statute-barred within 10 years. At this moment, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia is closing its doors - should we congratulate all those who have managed to hide over the last 20 years and encourage them to come and live in France (the only country in Europe with such an approach) so that they never have to answer for their actions?

We appeal to you, Mr. President, that France keep its word given to the victims of ethnic cleansing that it will do everything to bring those responsible to justice. We wish to note that Radomir Šušnjar was arrested in Paris on April 4, 2014, and that before the Paris Court of Appeal on February 10, 2016, as we have learned, the final hearing will be held and a decision will be made on whether Radomir Šušnjar will be extradited to the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina or not, states the letter signed by Hasečić.