Bosnian Muslims Appeal Over Demolished Mosques

The Bosnian Islamic Community said it plans to appeal against a court ruling in Republika Srpska after the court struck down an earlier ruling concerning compensation for the demolition of mosques in the 1992-5 war.

The court further ordered the Islamic Community to pay 24,000 euro in court expenses.

A senior official of the Islamic Community, Senaid Zajimovic, said they would appeal to the Constitutional Court in the next few days and then go to Strasbourg if all else failed.

“The appeal... will be handed over on Friday or at the beginning of the next week,” Zajimovic said in Sarajevo.

In 2009 a lower court in Banja Luka, the administrative centre of the Serb entity, ordered the Republika Srpska to pay compensation for 16 mosques destroyed in the war in the city.

The entity appealed to the entity's own Supreme Court, which overturned the ruling and ordered the Islamic Community to pay 24,000 euro in court expenses.

The explanation of the Supreme Court, released early in February, said that the reason for overturning the first ruling was that the legal timeframe for the case had expired.

The Islamic Community said they would not pay the order for expenses but will try to obtain justice in higher national and international courts.

“If the Constitutional Court drops our appeal, the Islamic Community will appeal to the European Court of Human Rights,” Zajimovic told Balkan Insight.

The Islamic Community in Bosnia says thousands of Muslim monuments of various kinds were either destroyed or vandalised by Bosnian Serbs during the 1992-95 war in the country.