THE INDICTMENT FILED FOR WAR CRIMES IN THE ZVORNIK AREA

A prosecutor of the Special Department for War Crimes of the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina filed an indictment against:

-           Zdravko Čvorić, born in 1967 in Tuzla, residing in the Netherlands, citizen of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, who is remanded in custody.

The charges against the defendant are that he, as a member of the Zvornik Reserve Police Force, acted contrary to the provisions of the Geneva Conventions on the Protection of Civilians in Time of War during the war and the armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The charges against him are that in late July 1992, while he was performing his duty of a guard in the prison in the facility of FC ‘Divič’ in Zvornik where Bosniak civilians from the area of Zvornik and its surroundings were unlawfully detained, he, being armed, forcefully took out an injured victim - Bosniak woman, whom he, with weapons and threatening her life, raped in a nearby facility after which he ordered the victim to return to the premises with the other prisoners.

The defendant is charged with having committed the criminal offence of War crime against civilians set out in Article 142 of the Criminal Code of the SFRY.

The prosecution is going to prove the charges by calling 16 witnesses, one of whom has been granted protective measures, as well as one expert witness, and by submitting 15 pieces of material evidence.

The indictment was forwarded to the Court of BiH for confirmation.