INDICTMENT ISSUED FOR WAR CRIMES IN THE AREA OF ILIDŽA AND HADŽIĆI

The accused Branislav Gavrilović (1964) is charged with crimes committed against the victims of Bosniak, Croat and Serb ethnicity, during 1992 and 1993.

A Prosecutor of the Special Department for War Crimes has issued an Indictment against the following person:

-          Branislav Gavrilović aka "Brne", born in 1964 in Sarajevo, residing in Belgrade, a citizen of the Republic of Serbia.

The accused is charged with acting contrary to the provisions of the international humanitarian law and the Geneva Conventions relative to the protection of civilian population and prisoners of war, during the war and the armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, while he was a Commander of the military formation called “Brne’s Chetniks”, which was part of the First Igman Brigade of the Republika Srpska Army in Blažuj.

The accused is charged that, in early December of 1992, during the attack on the Otes settlement in the municipality of  Ilidža in which members of the “Brne’s Chetniks” formation also took part, he ordered that the civilian population, who had taken refuge in a garage, surrender, and one member of the aforementioned unit, subordinated to and in the presence of the accused, shot and killed on the spot the heavily wounded and immobile Haris Merzić, a student of medicine who was taken out of the garage and who worked as a doctor in an infirmary in Otes.

Furthermore, the accused is charged with having participated in the ill-treatment of the prisoners at the Golo Brdo site on Mount Igman, in the summer of 1993, when several members of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina were captured, including persons of Serb and Croat ethnicity, and he personally and directly shot and killed one prisoner, while members of the said unit who were subordinated to him, on his orders, killed two prisoners and mistreated one prisoner and then took him to be detained at the Kula detention facility.

This accused person is charged with ordering and aiding and abetting the killings of civilian persons, and with intentionally inflicting severe physical and mental pain and suffering, thus violating the rules of international law against prisoners of war, as well as with committing and ordering the commission of murder, whereby he committed the criminal offence of War Crimes against Civilians, referred to in Article 173, paragraph 1, item c), and the criminal offence of War Crimes against Prisoners of War, referred to in Article 175, item a) of the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Indictment has been forwarded to the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina.