Appeals chamber dismisses Dragan Zelenović's appeal and affirms sentence of 15 years' imprisonment

The Appeals Chamber today affirmed a sentence of 15 years' imprisonment for Dragan Zelenović, a former Bosnian Serb soldier and military policeman who earlier this year pleaded guilty to charges of torture and rape of Bosnian Muslim women and girls from the Foča municipality in eastern Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Appeals Chamber unanimously dismissed all grounds of appeal filed by Zelenović against the Trial Chamber's sentencing judgement of 4 April 2007 and thereby rejected his request to lower the sentence.

Zelenović, who came into the Tribunal's custody in June 2006 after several years on the run, pleaded guilty in January 2007 to three counts of torture and four counts of rape. In total he was found guilty of personally committing nine rapes, four of which were gang rapes. Many involved torture.

Zelenović will serve his prison term in one of the states which have concluded an agreement with the ICTY on enforcement of sentences. He is entitled to credit for the time he has already spent in detention since 22 August 2005 .

This judgement concludes the last case before the Tribunal specifically focused on crimes committed in Foča after the take-over of the municipality by Serb forces in April 1992 . The Tribunal has previously convicted three persons for the rape, torture and enslavement of Bosnian Muslim women and girls and one person for the persecution, torture and murder of non-Serb men held in the KP Dom detention camp . Four other accused were transferred to Sarajevo for trial before the War Crimes Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The full text of the summary of the judgement can be found at the following links:

For English: http://www.icty.org/x/cases/zelenovic/acjug/en/071031_Zelenovic_summary_en.pdf

For French: http://www.icty.org/x/cases/zelenovic/acjug/fr/071031_Zelenovic_summary_fr.pdf

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International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia
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