

Vuk Ratkovic. Photo: BIRN

The appeals chamber of the Bosnian state court on Monday confirmed the verdict convicting Vuk Ratkovic, a former member of the Visegrad Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army, of raping a woman in Visegrad on three occasions between June 1992 and January 1993.

The court upheld the eight-year jail sentence ordered by the first-instance verdict.

It also confirmed the part of the sentence ordering Ratkovic to pay his victim 35,000 Bosnian marks (around 17,900 euros) in compensation.

The defence had appealed against the first-instance verdict because it claimed there had been violations of the criminal proceedings and that facts had been wrongly and incompletely determined, among other alleged shortcomings, but the appeals chamber rejected these arguments.

Monday’s verdict cannot be appealed.

Ratkovic is also on trial in a separate case before the state court for allegedly committing war crimes in Strpci in Bosnia in 1993, when Serb fighters stopped a train, seized 20 passengers and killed them.