TEN SERBIANS LIVING IN BOSNIA CHARGED FOR HELPING CONVICTED SERBIAN WAR CRIMINAL RADOVAN STANKOVIC ESCAPE FROM PRISON

SARAJEVO, Bosnia (September 15,2008) - The Office of the Bosnian State Prosecutor has charged ten Serbians living in Bosnia suspected to have helped a convicted Serbian war criminal escape from prison.It also presented details of the plot which enabled Serbian war criminal Radovan Stankovic to escape from the Foca prison in June 2007.

Serbian war criminal Radovan Stankovic was indicted by the International Crimes Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague for crimes against humanity committed during the 1992-1995 Serbian aggression against Bosnia. After evading justice for years, he was arrested by the NATO-led peacekeeping forces, SFOR, on July 9, 2002.

He became the first indictee whose Hague trial was entrusted to the Bosnian State Court. In April 2007 Serbian war criminal Radovan Stankovic was sentenced to 20 years in prison for rapes and murder of Bosnian civilians in the Foca area of eastern Bosnia. He was sent to the prison in the same town where committed the crimes, from where he escaped only two months later.

Serbian war criminal Radovan Stankovic, who is believed to be hiding in the genocidal Serbia, recently started sending threatening letters to the Bosnian state court judges. The prison director and nine guards who were implicated in the escape (all of them are Serbians living in Bosnia) and initially dismissed, were recently reinstated thanks to a legal loophole.

According to the charges pressed by the Bosnian State Prosecutor’s Office, the escape plan was plotted by the convicted Serbian war criminal Radovan Stankovic and his brother Ranko. Ranko provided a getaway car with stolen plates and arranged that a local dentist and a nurse issue fake medical documents, based on which Serbian war criminal was to be taken to have his teeth x-rayed.

He escaped while being transported to the dentists’ while seven "guards" who were escorting him, did nothing to stop him, the Bosnian State Prosecutor’s office said and pressed varying criminal charges against all Serbians living in Bosnia involved – Ranko Stankovic, the two medical workers and seven guards.
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