Eurasia Press & News
Gojko Klickovic, a war crimes defendant, has been elected as the new mayor of the town of Krupa na Uni, in Republika Srpska.According to incomplete data from the Bosnian Central Election Commission, Klickovic, a candidate for the Serbian Democratic Party, won over 60 per cent of the votes in the local elections held on Sunday, October 7.
The municipality of Krupa na Uni, which has 3,000 mostly Serb inhabitants, was created from a part of the pre-war municipality of Bosanska Krupa, which after the signing of the Dayton Accord became a part of Republika Srpska.
According to the indictment filed by the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Klickovic participated in a joint criminal enterprise with other members of his party in 1992, and as the commander of the Crisis Headquarters established the Serb Municipality of Bosanska Krupa by military force.
He is charged with ordering the forced expulsion of Bosniaks and other crimes against non-Serb civilians.
In November 2010, Klickovic was acquitted of these charges by the first instance verdict of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina. However, that verdict was quashed and his case was sent for a retrial, which started this summer.
At the beginning of his retrial, Klickovic said that the prosecution can continue its investigations “for another 100 years, but they won’t prove that what I did was a crime.”
Milan Ninkovic, who is suspected of war crimes committed in Doboj, failed in his bid for the position of mayor of the town. Ninkovic, the former leader of the Serbian Democratic Party in Doboj, ran for the post as an independent candidate.
There were also convicted criminals among the candidates in the Bosnian municipal elections – Branko Grujic, Simo Zaric and Blagoje Simic. Because the election results are still incomplete, it is not known if any of these men have been elected.
The electoral law in Bosnia and Herzegovina prohibits someone from standing as a candidate if they are currently serving a prison sentence, or if they have failed to comply with an order to appear before any court for violations of humanitarian law.
However, it says nothing about those who have already served their sentences for war crimes or are currently on trial.
