[JURIST] A group of independent UN human rights experts on Wednesday warned against the possible release of convicted war criminal Milorad Trbic [press release] following the reversal of his sentence [text] by the Bosnian Constitutional Court [official website]. Trbic was convicted in 2009 of committing genocide in Srebrenica [BBC backgrounder] in 1995 during the Bosnian Civil War [JURIST news archive] and was sentenced to 30 years in prison by the Bosnian State Court [official website]. The UN experts, including Rapporteurs Pablo de Greiff, Ariel Dulitzky, Juan Mendez and Gabriela Knaul [official profiles], issued their warning after the Bosnian Constitutional Court quashed the existing verdict and ordered a retrial. Resulting from what the UN experts refer to as a “highly questionable” interpretation of the European Court of Human Rights [official website] judgment in the case of Maktouf and Damjanovic [text, PDF], the Bosnian Constitutional Court has overruled more than a dozen other convictions for war crimes and aiding genocide over the past year. Trbic’s case is the first to involve an individual who has been convicted of directly committing genocide. Each of these decisions has led to release pending retrial and lower sentences, and UN experts have warned that another individual may flee prior to retrial as recently happened with war criminal Novak Dukic. The independent experts described these decisions as part of a trend of sympathy toward individuals convicted of war crimes by some groups.

Investigations [JURIST backgrounder] of war crimes relating to the Bosnian-Serbian conflict are ongoing, and suspects are still being arrested and prosecuted. In July a Dutch court found the government responsible for 300 deaths [JURIST report] in the Srebrenica massacre. In January Ratko Mladic [JURIST news archive], former leader of the Bosnian Serb army during the Bosnian civil war, refused to testify [JURIST report] in the war crimes trial of fellow Bosnian Serb military leader Radovan Karadzic [BBC profile]. Earlier that month the appeals chamber for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia [official website] upheld [JURIST report] the war crimes convictions of four Serbian military officials, but reduced the sentences for three of them.