INDICTMENT ISSUED AGAINST IVAN ZELENIKA (1953) FOR WAR CRIMES AGAINST CIVILIANS

Prosecutor of the Special Department for War Crimes has issued an Indictment against Ivan Zelenika, born on 17 October 1953 in Široki Brijeg, a citizen of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.

The accused is charged with acting in violation of the provisions of the international law and Geneva Conventions and with inhumane treatment and infliction of great suffering and injuries to the physical and mental integrity and health against Bosniak civilians, as a member of the HVO, during the war and armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The accused is charged with singling out the prisoner L.A. in November of 1993, while the prisoners of the Heliodrom detention camp, including the Bosniak prisoner with the initials of L.A., were performing forced labour on the Šantićeva Street in Mostar, and he tortured, beat up and severely mistreated the prisoner, cut his throat with a knife and subjected him to extreme life-threatening danger by forcibly putting him to the place where a loop-hole in the bunker was, with a lit cigarette, thus exposing him to the danger of being spotted and killed by the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina on the other side. Having seen that nobody was shooting from the other side, he ordered the prisoner L.A. to go back to the forced labour, and he beat him and mistreated him again the same day. The accused is charged with severely mistreating the father of the victim L.A., in the apartment owned by L.A.’s father, beating him with his hands, legs and with bottles all over his body, thus inflicting multiple fractures to his ribs. The accused is charged with the commission of the criminal offense of War Crimes against Civilians, as referred to in Article 173 of the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Indictment has been forwarded to the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina for confirmation.