The Supreme Court of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina rejected the appeals of the Sarajevo Cantonal Prosecutor's Office and the defense and confirmed the verdict of the Sarajevo Cantonal Court in which Veljko Papic was sentenced to two years in prison for crimes committed in 1993 and 1994 in the Sarajevo settlements Grbavica and Kovacici.

Papic was sentenced in 2022 after a repeated trial. The Prosecution proposed a higher sentence against this verdict, while the defense filed an appeal for legal reasons. The Supreme Court of the Federation of BiH issued a verdict rejecting the appeals as unfounded and confirming the verdict in which Papic was found guilty and sentenced to two years in prison for the crime of “war crimes against the civilian population”, Detektor reports.

Papic was convicted as a former battalion commander of the First Sarajevo Brigade of the Republika Srpska Army, who, using his position, as well as the inability of civilians of non-Serb nationality to leave the area, planned, directed and supervised the activities of the formed platoon located in Beogradska Street.

As stated in the verdict, Papic issued orders, forcing civilians of non-Serb nationality to perform hard work daily, against their will, along with physical and psychological abuse. The work was usually performed on the front line, without compensation and working hours, with poor and insufficient nutrition.

He was convicted that in the fall of 1993, in the evening hours in Splitska Street, he ordered elderly civilians to carry a large amount of sand up the hill until morning, in bad weather conditions, as well as that in March 1994, he ordered the platoon to remove the flag of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, threatening to kill them and to transfer explosives in the winter of 1993 to the “red building” located on the demarcation line, to the part where members of the ABiH were located.