The State Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has overruled the verdict for former Bosnian Army officer Enver Buza, who was sentenced to 12 years for the 1993 massacre of Croats in the village of Uzdol, and ordered a retrial, the state court said on Thursday.

In September 2019, Buza was sentenced by a Sarajevo court to 12 years in prison for war crimes against Croat civilians in the village of Uzdol in Herzegovina. Both the defence and the prosecution lodged appeals against that ruling.

The massacre at Uzdol was committed on 14 September 1993, when members of the BiH Army killed 27 local Croats in a raid on the village. The oldest victim was an 86-year old woman while the youngest victim was only 10.

Buza was the first person to stand trial for the Uzdol atrocity. None of the direct perpetrators has been prosecuted.

Buza, aged 73, was charged based on the fact that during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in the period when there was an armed conflict between the BiH Army and the Bosnian Croat HVO forces, he commanded the Prozor independent battalion and as such had the real and effective control of police forces from Prozor who attacked Uzdol.

The crimes were committed as part of Operation Neretva 93, which was commanded by the wartime BiH Army Chief of Staff, Sefer Halilovic. During his trial before the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Halilovic was acquitted because the tribunal ruled that he did not have any real control of the forces on the ground.