here - Humanitarian Law Center/Fond za humanitarno pravo

Mirko Marunić to two years in prison. Perica Đaković was acquitted. In the reasoning of the
judgment, specifically in the part relating to the acquittal of Perica Đaković, the court stated that
it had not been proved that Đaković’s acts had inflicted severe suffering or bodily harm on the
injured party, therefore an important characteristic of the offence Đaković was accused of, was
not found to be present.
Upon hearing appeals by both parties, the Court of Appeal in Belgrade on 19 January 2011
confirmed 193 the first instance judgment with respect to Milorad Lazić, Mirko Marunić and
Nikola Konjević, and quashed the part of the judgment relating to Perica Đaković and ordered
that he be retried before the first-instance court. 194
Following the retrial at the Higher Court in Belgrade, Perica Đaković was on 1 July 2011
acquitted 195 of the charges set forth in the TRZ indictment against him.
The case reached the Court of Appeal in Belgrade, which on 11 January 2012 accepted 196 an
appeal lodged by the TRZ and reversed the first-instance judgment, adjudging Perica Đaković
guilty and sentencing him to one year in prison. In its reasoning, the Court of Appeal 197 states,
inter alia, that while blows with a baton that the injured party received to his bare soles did not
inflict severe mental suffering or physical pain on him, the indictee’s acts did amount to inhuman
treatment, as they constituted a serious attack on human dignity in a situation where the injured
party, who the accused knew was a prisoner of war, was confined for several days at the police
station and subjected to daily beatings and ill-treatment by other individuals. In these
circumstances, the said act of the accused, by its character and intensity, did constitute an act
constituting a war crime against prisoners of war. Inhuman treatment, while being a milder form
of ill-treatment, because it inflicts less severe physical and mental pain on an injured party, does
violate the human dignity of an injured party.
Perica Đaković’s defense counsel appealed against the second-instance judgment. At the Court of
Appeal’s session held on 26 October 2012, Đaković’ defense counsel, explaining the grounds for
appeal said, inter alia, that the injured party, Mirko Medunić, had testified before the District
Court in Rijeka (Republic of Croatia) in 1993 that Đaković had hit him on the soles of the feet in
the ‘Jadran’ inn, while Nikola Vujnović had sat on him, and that this incident had not lasted
192 K Po2 36/10.
193 Kž1 Po2 9/10.
194 For an analysis of the Court of Appeal’s judgment of 19 January 2011, see the Report on War Crimes Trials in
Serbia in 2011, HLC, p. 36.
195 K-Po2 3/11.
196 Kž1 Po2 9/11.
197 http://www.bg.ap.sud.rs/lt/articles/sluzba-za-odnose-sa-javnoscu/aktuelni-predmeti/ratni-zlocini/rz-doneteodluke/.
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