EIT:n suuri jaosto: Bosnia ja Hertsegovinan sotarikosasioissa loukattiin taannehtivan rikoslain soveltamisen kieltoa

Euroopan ihmisoikeustuomioistuimen suuri jaosto on tänään antamassaan tuomiossa katsonut, että Bosnia ja Hertsegovinassa käydyssä sotarikosoikeudenkäynnissä sovellettiin tekoajan jälkeen voimaan tullutta lakia, joka todennäköisesti johti ankarampiin tuomioihin, kuin mihin rikosten tekoaikoihin voimassa olleen lain soveltaminen olisi johtanut.

EIT:n lehdistötiedotteesta:

In today’s Grand Chamber judgment in the case of Maktouf and Damjanović v. Bosnia and Herzegovina (application nos. 2312/08 and 34179/08), which is final, the European Court of Human Rights held, unanimously, that there had been:

a violation of Article 7 (no punishment without law) of the European Convention on Human Rights.

The case concerned complaints by two men convicted by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina of war crimes about the proceedings before that court. They complained in particular that a more stringent criminal law, namely the 2003 Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina, had been applied to them retroactively than that which had been applicable at the time they committed the offences – in 1992 and 1993 respectively – namely the 1976 Criminal Code of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.

Given the type of offences of which the applicants had been convicted (war crimes as opposed to crimes against humanity) and the degree of seriousness (neither of the applicants had been held criminally liable for any loss of life), the Court found that the applicants could have received lower sentences had the 1976 Code been applied. Since there was a real possibility that the retroactive application of the 2003 Code operated to the applicants’ disadvantage in the special circumstances of this case, it held that they had not been afforded effective safeguards against the imposition of a heavier penalty.

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