The yesterday’s sentencing of the accomplices in the murder of Denis Mrnjavac - Ademir Lelović, Berin Talić and Armina Milić is a clear demonstration of the way Bosnia and Herzegovina is set as a state and the legislators’ intent to secure greater rights to the persons that committed most grievous of crimes than to their victims. In the rationale of the sentences, the Court made it clear that it understood the sequence of events in the case and the position and role played by each of the defendants, and explained the legal basis for the decision.
It is lamentable that the Court acquitted Armina Milić of the charges of concealing evidence and obstruction of justice just because she was a mother emotionally tied to one of the murderers. We emphasize that didn’t hid just her son’s belongings, but things that belonged to the other accomplices, which provided the Court with sufficient grounds to sentence her properly, but it failed to do so. We should also bear to mind that this was a mother who sent her son to school with brass knuckles and similar instruments for infliction of serious bodily trauma.
On the other hand, we have another mother that sent her child to school, not a thought crossing her mind that her son could become a victim of a bragging game to prove one’s reputation, common in criminal circles that rule the city. The system demonstrates that it was better to raise one’s children as criminals and help them rise along the ladder of popularity in criminal circles than be a mother of a straight-A and polite high school student.
We shouldn’t forget that the citizens present in the street-car on that day contributed to the sentence with their refusal to testify in the Court. The apathy of the citizens provides the reason for the prevalence of crime of such a scope and magnitude, in a situation in which silence could be considered paramount to approval. Without evidence and witness testimonies, no legal system, and especially not hours, is able to satisfy the demands for justice.
“Akcija Građana” Association
