SWEDEN/FILE: Former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic to be released next week

Record ID: 568773

  • Title: SWEDEN/FILE: Former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic to be released next week
  • Date: 23rd October 2009
  • Summary: STOCKHOLM, SWEDEN (OCTOBER 22, 2009) (REUTERS) EXTERIORS OF KRONOBERG PRISON IN CENTRAL STOCKHOLM WHERE PLAVSIC IS HELD PRISON GATE CLOSING
  • Embargoed: 7th November 2009 12:00
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  • Reuters ID: LVA3S2ZC8AIB6NH87AQV064GZ6SR
  • Story Text: Sweden's Justice Ministry has announced that former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic will be released from prison next Tuesday (October 27).
    Sweden will release former Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic, two-thirds into an 11-year jail term for war crimes, the government said on Thursday (October 22).
    The Yugoslavia war crimes tribunal in The Hague (ICTY), which convicted her in February 2003, consented last month to grant Plavsic an early release from the sentence she was serving in Sweden.
    A foreign ministry official said a decision had been taken regarding a release under a suspended sentence.
    Plavsic was recently transferred to the Kronoberg prison in central Stockholm.
    She will be released from prison next Tuesday (October 27) and will be free to leave the country, a justice ministry spokeswoman said.
    Plavsic was convicted in February 2003 of persecuting Bosnian Muslims in the 1992-95 Bosnian war, but will have served two-thirds of her sentence in October, making her eligible for parole under Swedish laws.
    People convicted at the ICTY do not serve their sentence at the Hague-based tribunal's detention unit, as it is not a penitentiary. They are instead transferred to a prison outside of the Netherlands to serve their time.
    Plavsic, 79, had been one of three members of the presidency of the Serbian Republic in Bosnia-Herzegovina, headed by Radovan Karadzic. Karadzic is due to go on trial at the tribunal on Monday (October 26) on 11 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including genocide at Srebrenica.
    Plavsic pleaded guilty at her trial to persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds by "inviting paramilitaries from Serbia to assist Bosnian Serb forces in effecting ethnic separation by force".
    As part of the plea bargaining, charges of genocide, extermination and murder were stripped from her indictment.
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