Belgrade’s appeals court increased the jail term for a former Serb paramilitary convicted of murder, rape and torture during the war in Bosnia to 20 years.
The appeals court’s war crimes chamber ruled on Monday that ex-fighter Dragan Jovic’s sentence should be increased from 15 to 20 years, the maximum penalty for war crimes under Serbian law.
Jovic was convicted of killing a civilian in Bjeljina in north-east Bosnia on July 14, 1992, and of the rape and torture of several other non-Serb civilians, together with two other volunteer fighters, Zoran Djurdjevic and Alen Ristic.
Djurdjevic and Ristic’s final verdicts were also handed down by the court on Friday.
Ristic’s sentence was reduced from 12 to 10 years because of his youth at the time the crimes were committed, while Djurdjevic’s 13-year sentence was reaffirmed.
The court ruled that the three convicted men entered a Bosniak family’s house near Bijeljina on June 14, 1992, took money and other personal belongings, killed the owner of the house, Rama Avdic, and raped his daughter Nizama and daughter-in-law Hajrete several times.
They then drove the naked women to the village of Ljeljenca, where they raped them again and left them beside the road.
The case was transferred to Serbia by Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Timeline of events in the case against 13 former Serb fighters charged with committing war crimes in the villages of Cuska, Zahac, Ljubenic and Pavlac in Kosovo in 1999.