Prosecutors Admit Error Over Victims in Lukic Case

Prosecutors have requested the removal of the names of three people listed in the indictment against Milan and Sredoje Lukic as having been killed by the Bosnian Serb cousins, after evidence surfaced that they may not be dead.



The prosecution conceded that some of those said to have been burnt alive in a house fire in Pionirska Street in the eastern Bosnian town of Visegrad on June 14, 1992, were most likely not there at the time.



The Lukic cousins are accused of forcing some 70 Bosniaks inside the house before setting it alight. According to the prosecution’s pre-trial brief, filed last March, only seven people survived the blaze.



But the prosecution’s demography unit now says it’s possible that three people named in the indictment as having died in the fire were included by mistake.



The unit carried out an investigation following the submission of a defence motion on March 3, in which Milan Lukic’s lawyers said they had discovered during their investigations that up to 18 of those mentioned on the Pionirska list did not die in the fire.



They provided evidence that the people in question were still alive, and requested a stay in proceedings to investigate further.



In its submission, the defence lambasted a statistical report prepared by the prosecution’s demographic expert – which provided evidence to back up the list of victims in the indictment – as being “full of errors and inconsistencies”.



The defence wrote that the discovery that any named victims are alive “brings into question… the ordinary competence and due diligence of the formal investigation… to actually verify alleged victims were in fact deceased”.



It also argued that there was no proof of death for any of the victims named as there were no bodies, no death certificates, and no forensic evidence. Eyewitnesses of the event were “biased and interested members of the alleged victims’ family”, they said.



Judges denied the defence motion for a stay of proceedings on March 12, writing that they were “not satisfied that the defence [had] demonstrated a serious flaw in this case”.



Four days later, the demography unit – which corroborates the identities of victims by cross- checking them against various data sources – issued a report in response to the defence claims.



Only three people listed as dead in the indictment may have been added to the victims’ list in error, concluded statistical expert Ewa Tabeau, who heads the unit.



In its report, the unit confirmed part of the defence submission that it had located two people whose names were on the indictment, who had actually left Visegrad before the fire. It also conceded that a third person named by the defence could also be alive, and so shouldn’t have been included.



Yet prosecutors strongly denied that the rest of the list of victims was unreliable.



They also insisted that next of kin are regularly relied upon to establish the death of a relative, despite their being “biased and interested members of the alleged victims’ family”, as argued by the defence.



In her report, Tabeau wrote that she identified major inconsistencies in the defence claim that 18 of the people listed as dead in the indictment are actually still alive, or died well after the fire.



While the people presented by the defence had the same names as the recorded victims, their ages and other biographical information did not match those listed in the indictment.



The trial continues next week. Closing arguments will take place April 8.



Rachel Irwin is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.