The President of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT), Carmel Agius, has dismissed a motion for early release by Jadranko Prlic, a former Bosnian Croat political leader who is serving 25 years in prison in the United Kingdom for war crimes committed during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

According to a decision published on the MICT website, Judge Agius considered a notification from the United Kingdom dated 29 November 2019, informing him that Prlić would become eligible for conditional release after completing one half of his sentence on 18 February 2020.

Agius has notified the UK authorities that Prlić will become eligible for early release only in April 2024. He said he had consulted judges Theodor Meron, Jean-Claude Antonetti and Liu Daqun on the matter. The three judges were members of the trial chamber that sentenced Prlic and other five senior Bosnian Croat political and military officials to prison terms for war crimes against Bosniaks, They agreed that the British proposal should not be accepted because “no compelling or exceptional circumstances have been provided”.

Prlic was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), MICT's predecessor, and surrendered in April 2004. His trial ended in 2017.