The defense team of the President of the Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, has submitted a written request for the recusal of judge Sena Uzunović. Uzunovic was a member of the so-called Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina and a wartime military judge for Serbs in the notorious Konjic. They say that because of her, the Dobrovoljačka case has been on hold for more than a decade.
A reasonable period in which the parties in the proceeding should be informed about the change of judge is at least eight days, yet Uzunović appeared without any prior indication, although, according to the attorney of the President of the Republika Srpska, Goran Bubić, she knew she was appointed as a judge on Friday, February 2.
Bubić points out that the principle of impartiality has been violated because, he says, if we do not know who the judge is, how can we make any objections regarding the judge’s personality. And from a legal standpoint, there are more than enough reasons – from behavior in the courtroom after the oral request for recusal, insistence on reading parts of the indictment related to Dodik, to the most important – clear evidence that she entered the courtroom with prejudices against the accused.
“The position of the judge from April 2021, when she was a prosecutor at the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina and when, along with 14 other prosecutors, she sought to raise an indictment against Milorad Dodik for the criminal offense of attacking the constitutional order. I believe that this way she shows bias in the case and that this circumstance alone should exclude her from further proceedings,” says Bubić.
Undoubtedly, political activism should also disqualify Uzunović from this politically mounted court proceeding, not only against the president but also against the Republika Srpska. Uzunović is a member of the SDA, a party with the programmatic goal of abolishing the Republika Srpska, for whose interests she was a high official in the federal government from 1998 to 2001. Evidence about her war past and judgments is emerging, such as documents unequivocally proving that she interrogated prisoners of the 4th Mountain Brigade under duress. She is also responsible because the families of those killed in Dobrovoljacka are still waiting for justice.
“The then foreign prosecutor Jude Romano decided to suspend the investigation in the Dobrovoljacka case. The families of the victims filed a complaint with the Prosecutor’s Office, which has a team for deciding on complaints. As a member of that team, Sena Uzunovic acted and requested that the complaint be rejected as unfounded, because, according to her words, there were no elements of a war crime,” says Viktor Nuzdić, director of the Republic Center for Research of War, War Crimes.
He refuted Uzunović and her view of the war and war crimes. The Constitutional Court denied it, but the indictment was confirmed by the Court only in 2022. The fact that such individuals, like Sena Uzunović, still administer justice, the BORS can no longer tolerate.
“It is completely clear to us that this is one of the mounted processes in which not only the President of the Republika Srpska is being tried but also the people in Srpska. We are returning to the era of colonization, without the right to vote, without the right to power,” says Milorad Gagić, president of the BORS Presidency.
The HJPC previously rejected the information from the Republic Center for Research of War and War Crimes, which included evidence of the war past not only of Sena Uzunovic but also of 15 other current judges and prosecutors in the Court and Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Will the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina also ignore the numerous defense allegations for her recusal?
Source: RTRS
