On 13 October 2026, the War Crimes Department of the Higher Court in Belgrade acquitted Milenko Karlica of the charge that he had participated in the forcible displacement of civilians from the villages of Maslovare, Alići and Ekići, in the municipality of Bosanski Novi, on 22 June 1992. Milenko Karlica was initially also charged with organising the attack on these villages, commanding the other participants and killing civilians. By a decision issued in May 2026, the Belgrade Court of Appeal acquitted Karlica of those charges in a final judgment, while setting aside the judgment concerning the forcible displacement of civilians and remitting the case for retrial. Accordingly, on 16 September 2026, the Public Prosecutor’s Office for War Crimes specified the indictment.
In the repeated first-instance proceedings, Karlica was acquitted of the last remaining charge against him in this case, meaning that his criminal responsibility for the crimes committed in Alići and Ekići has not been established.
In the reasons for judgment, the presiding judge, Snežana Nikolić Garotić, stated that Karlica had joined a group of 20 other individuals solely for the purpose of disarming the Muslim population, amid anger and resentment among the Serb population over the death of a Serb soldier, Radenko Baltić. The Court accepted the defendant’s account that women and children had been transported by tractors to the settlement of Urije in order to remove them from danger and protect them. The Humanitarian Law Center considers it unacceptable that the Court should treat the forcible transfer of women and children, who had first been separated from the men and taken from their homes, as a rescue operation, rather than examining this conduct in the context of the attack on Alići and Ekići and the forcible displacement of the Bosniak population.
Following the first-instance judgment in November 2025, the Humanitarian Law Center also pointed out that the Court had failed to properly assess the evidence identifying Milenko Karlica as the organiser of the attack. It also highlighted that the indictment itself had prevented the circumstances surrounding the attack from being fully established. Specifically, the indictment against Milenko Karlica was transferred to the Public Prosecutor’s Office for War Crimes by the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which had charged him with crimes against humanity. The indictment covered the period from May to September 1992 and included the attack on Alići and Ekići as part of a widespread and systematic attack by the Army of Republika Srpska, the Territorial Defence, the military police and paramilitary formations against the civilian population in the municipality of Bosanski Novi. After taking over the case, the Public Prosecutor’s Office for War Crimes amended the indictment and charged Karlica with a war crime against the civilian population, narrowing the charges to 22 June 1992 alone, that is, to the specific day of the attack during which more than 20 civilians were killed. In the Humanitarian Law Center’s assessment, this approach stripped the attack on Alići and Ekići of its broader context and prevented the Court from examining the treatment of the Bosniak population in the area over a longer period.
Instead of addressing the ambiguities that had led to the defendant’s acquittal in the original proceedings and further substantiating the charges, the Public Prosecutor’s Office proposed no new evidence and agreed to have the witness statements from the previous proceedings read into the record. The retrial concluded in a single hearing, during which the previous witness statements were read out and the documentary evidence was examined, followed by closing arguments. The Humanitarian Law Center considers this approach by the Public Prosecutor’s Office particularly concerning in view of the gravity of the events described in the indictment itself.
The Humanitarian Law Center considers this outcome a serious failure to establish accountability for crimes against the civilian population. This failure was compounded by the Public Prosecutor’s Office’s passive approach to the examination of evidence and the witnesses proposed in the proceedings, as well as by the absence of charges of crimes against humanity. This approach narrowed the factual scope of the proceedings and made it more difficult to assess the systematic nature of the attacks against civilians, as well as the scale and broader context of the crimes committed.
