SARAJEVO -- A court in Bosnia-Herzegovina on February 29 sentenced a former member of the Bosnian Serb military to six years in prison for the rape of a Bosniak woman in the spring of 1992 shortly after war broke out in the country.
The long-overdue judgment in Sarajevo against Rade Grujic, 57, came in one of the few cases in which a member of the Bosnian military has been prosecuted for rape, despite tens of thousands of suspected cases.
Judge Tanja Curovic said that the court established beyond a reasonable doubt that in May 1992 Grujic entered a house in the village of Liplje in eastern Bosnia where Bosniak civilians were staying, took the victim into a room, ordered her to undress, and raped her.
In addition to the six-year sentence, Curovic ordered Grujic to pay the victim $5,400 and ordered him to be held in custody until the verdict becomes final. Grujic has the right to appeal the first-instance verdict.
Prosecutor Eldina Biuk said that the victim, whose name was withheld by the court, "clearly, unambiguously, and in detail" described what happened in Liplje.
The prosecutor said the victim knew Grujic because he was her neighbor, and she identified him in photographs presented during the trial and also pointed to him in the courtroom, identifying him as the man who raped her.
The prosecution called a total of 22 witnesses, including an expert witness, and submitted 60 material pieces of evidence.
Grujic's trial began in April 2023 after he was arrested in Liplje. The case is one of hundreds of war crimes cases in Bosnia, but one of the few prosecutions for rape during wartime, which falls under the category crime against humanity in Bosnia.
The court took into account the cruelty of the crime and the psychological consequences for the victim in determining the sentence, but it also considered the fact that the defendant was 25 at the time he committed the crime, has had no previous convictions, and is the father of two.
During the Bosnian War, which lasted from 1992 to 1995, it is estimated that between 20,000 and 50,000 women, girls, and men were raped. Many of them never received proper medical and psychological care and financial support.
Bosnia does not have a state law to support victims of war, including those who have suffered sexual violence.
A war crimes court in Belgrade in 2010 convicted several Serbs of committing crimes in Zvornik, a city near Liplje, and the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia previously convicted Bosnian Serb political and army leaders of war crimes in the Zvornik municipality.