Defence Appeals Conviction of Milan Lukic

Lawyers representing Bosnian Serb paramilitary Milan Lukic, who was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Hague tribunal last month, have appealed against his conviction, claiming the court’s plan to wind up its work denied their client a fair trial.



Lukic, 42, was found guilty on July 20 on all 21 counts in his indictment at the United Nations court, including the burning to death of up to 120 Bosnian Muslim civilians in the eastern Bosnian town of Visegrad in 1992.



Judges found that he had twice barricaded a large number of people, including women and children, inside separate houses – one on the town’s Pionirska Street and the other in the Bikavac neighbourhood – before setting them on fire.



The former paramilitary had pleaded not guilty to all 21 counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war – including murder, torture and extermination – relating to six incidents in Visegrad between 1992 and 1994.



He was also convicted of shooting dead 12 men beside the Drina River which flows through Visegrad.



Delivering the verdict, Judge Patrick Robinson, who presided over the case, gave a damning assessment of Lukic’s crimes.



“The Pionirska Street fire and the Bikavac fire exemplify the worst acts of inhumanity that a person may inflict upon others. In the all too long, sad and wretched history of man’s inhumanity to man, the Pionirska Street and Bikavac fires must rank high,” he said.



Lukic’s cousin, Sredoje Lukic, who was a police officer in Visegrad, was also convicted for his involvement in the house fire on Pionirska Street and sentenced to 30 years in prison.



Milan Lukic’s American lawyers, Jason Alarid and Dragan Ivetic, have appealed against all their client’s convictions, complaining that the trial was conducted at a rate that prevented them from presenting an adequate defence.



The Milan Lukic defence sought either an acquittal of their client or a retrial.



“The concerted effect of decisions and orders taken by the trial chamber to move this trial at a fast pace gravely affected the appellant’s right to a fair trial and denied him of any form of due process recognised in international law,” they submitted to judges on August 19.

The claim is one of several challenges to the way in which the 11-month trial was conducted at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, ICTY.



Under its UN mandate, the ICTY is scheduled to wrap up its work by the end of 2010. However, the court itself expects to continue all of its cases until their completion in early 2012.



Lukic’s defence team has also submitted that it was inadequately prepared for the trial which started on July 9, 2008 – at which point, Alarid, the leading lawyer, had been on the case for less than four months and no deputy was yet in place.



Lukic was arrested in Argentina in August 2005 and had been awaiting trial in The Hague since February 2006. The court’s registry had removed Milan Lukic’s previous lawyer from the case at the defendant’s request.



Alarid and Ivetic also appealed against the court’s conviction on the ground that they were not given time to visit the alleged crime sites until the completion of the prosecution’s case.



“The lack of a sincere halt in the case to allow the defence an ample opportunity to gather itself resulted in a miscarriage of justice,” they wrote in their notice of appeal.



They also complained about “an army” of prosecution lawyers bringing the case against their client, compared to the defence’s limited resources.

Addressing the actual convictions of their client, the defence challenged the trial judges’ findings on each of the 21 counts on which he was convicted.



Concerning the two house fires on Pionirska Street and in Bikavac, the lawyers challenged the judges’ findings relating to the forensic evidence presented in Milan Lukic’s defence.



Having visited the sites of the house fires in January 2009, forensic experts had lent support to the defence’s case that the fires had never actually taken place. However, judges ruled that the conclusions of the experts had been “practically without foundation”.



The appeal also challenged the trial judges’ rejection – as unreliable – of alibi evidence which sought to show that Milan Lukic was not in Visegrad on the days the two house fires occurred.



The defence further claimed that trial judges “failed to address serious inconsistencies present in the testimony of supposed eyewitnesses and survivors, and thus relied on evidence of dubious credibility in finding Milan Lukic guilty of [the house fires]”.



The other crimes that Milan Lukic was convicted of – including the shooting of seven Bosnian Muslim men whom he kidnapped from a furniture factory in the town where they worked – are also the subject of the appeal.



Milan Lukic was also found guilty of shooting dead five men in cold blood on the banks of the Drina River on June 7, 1992. He was convicted of killing a Bosnian Muslim woman and of beating and mistreating civilians held at the Uzamnica prison camp in Visegrad.



Failing a full acquittal, the defence sought a retrial or the reduction of what it called a “disproportionate and excessive” sentence.



Sredoje Lukic’s defence also filed an appeal this week contesting the judges’ verdict that he was at the scene of the house burning on Pionirska Street on June 14, 1992.



Sredoje Lukic’s lawyers referred to three witnesses whose evidence had confused the identity of Sredoje and his cousin Milan at the crime scene.

The appeal also referred to the view taken in the judgement by Judge Robinson, who disagreed with his two fellow judges that the evidence conclusively proved Sredoje’s involvement in the fire.



The defence further contested Sredoje Lukic’s conviction for beating and mistreating prisoners at the Uzamnica camp during 1992 and 1993 and sought an acquittal on all seven counts – including murder, persecution and cruel treatment – for which he was convicted.



Meanwhile, the court’s prosecutors filed an appeal requesting that the 30-year sentence handed to Sredoje Lukic be increased.



They sought a conviction for a second count of persecution in relation to the mistreatment of prisoners at the Uzamnica camp.



They also said that Sredoje Lukic should be found guilty of the more serious crime of extermination, as a crime against humanity, in addition to murder, for his involvement in the house fire on Pionirska Street.



As yet, no date has been set for an appeal hearing.



Simon Jennings is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.