BiH war criminal evades serving prison term by fighting for Russians in Ukraine

In June, the Court of Appeal in Belgrade upheld the first-instance verdict sentencing Stjepanovic to 13 years in prison after he was found guilty of taking part, in May 1992, in the unlawful detention and abuse of Bosniak civilians in a village near Bratunac in eastern Bosnia, who were later executed.

He was also convicted of raping a 19-year-old woman who had been unlawfully detained together with her family.

He was tried in Serbia after the judiciary of Bosnia and Herzegovina handed the case over to the authorities there, on the basis of an indictment raised back in 2009, by which time Stjepanovic had already fled to the neighbouring country.

He received his first-instance sentence in December 2024, but the Belgrade court neither ordered his detention nor imposed a ban on leaving Serbia, and he took advantage of this to flee once again and join Russian paramilitary units in the Donetsk region.

This was established through an analysis of photographs he had posted on social media. In April, he published a photograph showing him in military uniform in a facility resembling a military bunker, surrounded by other soldiers. In one of the photographs from May, his military identification tag is also visible, bearing a serial number and the inscription “ВС Россия”, which translates as "Armed Forces of Russia".

Joining paramilitary units abroad is a criminal offence in both Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia, and carries a multi-year prison sentence.