Todorovic Case: 'Not Guilty' to the Additional Charges
Tribunal Update 109: Last Week in The Hague (18-23 January, 1999)
Todorovic Case: 'Not Guilty' to the Additional Charges
Tribunal Update 109: Last Week in The Hague (18-23 January, 1999)
During the first, on 30 September last year, he said he was not able to plead since his head ached from the blows he received during the arrest or "abduction". The second time, on 28 October, he pleaded "not guilty" to all 15 counts of the then indictment.
As that indictment was amended in the meantime, Todorovic was brought back before the judges on Thursday and asked to plead in regard to 12 additional charges in the second amended indictment. This new indictment charges Todorovic, the former police chief in Bosanski Samac, with persecution of Bosnian Croat, Bosnian Muslim and other non-Serb civilians on political, racial or religious grounds.
It also charges him with their unlawful deportation or transfer, as well as with participation in one incident of murder and one of torture, and in three incidents of beatings and three of sexual assaults. Todorovic's "speciality", according to the Prosecutor, was to force detained men to have oral sex with each other. To all these charges Todorovic pleaded "not guilty."
Todorovic will be tried before Trial Chamber III, together with Milan Simic, Miroslav Tadic and Simo Zaric, who voluntarily surrendered to the Tribunal last year. The first co-accused named on the initial "Bosanski Samac indictment", Slobodan Miljkovic, was shot dead in August last year in Kragujevac, Serbia.
The new, second indictment is headed by Blagoje Simic - the highest ranking civilian official in the municipality of Bosanski Samac in 1992-93 who is still currently at large.
