Defense Lawyers in Banjska case: Sentence excessive, all legal principles violated

Defense counsel in the Banjska case — Ljubomir Pantovic, Milos Delevic and Jovana Filipovic — stated that the sentence imposed is excessively severe, that the court yielded to public pressure, and that the ruling trampled on fundamental legal principles.

The defendants in the Banjska case, Vladimir Tolic and Blagoje Spasojevic, were sentenced to life imprisonment, while Dusan Maksimovic received a 30-year prison sentence.
Attorney Ljubomir Pantovic, who represented Spasojevic, emphasized that the sentence was excessively harsh.
“An excessively severe sentence, outside the law and outside the statutory rules governing sentencing. The trial panel clearly failed to withstand the immense pressure — nearly three years’ worth — from the entire local public demanding that the accused be given the harshest penalty. I doubt there was even any attempt by the panel to resist such pressure. I can only wonder what the outcome would have been had prominent members of this group, the organizers, been tried — what kind of sentences they would have received. Two, three, even four life sentences,” Pantovic said.

Counsel for Tolic, Milos Delevic, argued that the legal qualification was political in nature and that there were no elements of the criminal offense of terrorism.
“Unfortunately, the court of first instance succumbed to enormous media and public pressure and accepted the legal qualification put forward by the Special Prosecution. We believe that this qualification is primarily political and that there are no elements of the criminal offense of terrorism, particularly not for the second count of the indictment — namely, the alleged attempt to secede the northern part of the territory. The claim that 40 individuals attempted to secede four municipalities in the north is unfounded, illogical, and objectively impossible. We will appeal this decision and expect the Court of Appeal to annul or amend it,” Delevic stated.

Attorney Jovana Filipovic stressed that the very fact that Maksimovic was convicted of firing a weapon, despite negative DNA findings, gunshot residue, and traces of nitrates and nitrites, demonstrates that the judgment is neither sound nor grounded in law.
“This ruling has trampled on all legal principles and the fundamental tenets of criminal law. I am confident that the appellate panel will examine this judgment more carefully and render a decision that is truly based on law, rather than on informal considerations and expectations placed upon the trial panel in a case of this nature,” Filipovic stated.
She further added that individual criminal responsibility was entirely lacking.
“It was only minimally reflected in the indictment, but what we saw today is that the trial panel completely disregarded any notion of individual responsibility and rendered a generalized judgment, likely influenced by what was expected in such proceedings under public pressure,” Filipovic added.

Life imprisonment has been imposed in Kosovo on seven occasions to date, and this is the first time such a sentence has been handed down to two Serbs.
This is also the second conviction of Serbs on terrorism charges.