Kordic accepted the verdict calmly and bravely, his lawyer Mitko Naumovski said on Friday afternoon after the Appeals Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) upheld the trial chamber's verdict, imposing 25 years of imprisonment on Kordic, a former high-ranking official of Herzeg-Bosna.
Naumovski, who together with US attorneys Turner Smith and Stephen Sayers represented Kordic, expressed his personal disappointment with the final verdict.
Commenting on the verdict, Naumovski said that the entire defence team was sure that "history will show what kind of verdict this is and what happened in Ahmici".
The murder of about 100 villagers in that central Bosnian village on 16 April 1993 is seen by ICTY prosecutors as well as judges as one of the gravest crimes during the war in Bosnia in the 1990s.
Commenting on the alleged meeting of Bosnian Croat leaders in Vitez, on 15 April 1993, a day before the Ahmici massacre, Naumovski said that according to witnesses both Tihomir Blaskic and Kordic attended that meeting.
Naumovski wondered how judges could free one of them of responsibility for that crime, referring to Blaskic, on the basis of that meeting and find the other guilty.
Naumovski went on to say that no participant in that meeting had been questioned as a witness and no document from that meeting had ever been seen.
In 2001, the UN tribunal's trial chamber sentenced Kordic to 25 years in prison and Mario Cerkez to 15 years, finding them guilty of crimes against humanity, violations of the laws and customs of war and serious breaches of the Geneva conventions which they committed against Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) civilians in the Lasva valley, including the central Bosnian municipalities of Busovaca, Vitez, Novi Travnik and Kiseljak. The Appeals Chamber on Friday ruled a new sentence of six years' imprisonment for the second indictee, Cerkez, former commander of the Vitez units of the Bosnian Croat Defence troops (HVO).
Although the Appeals Chamber allowed some of the appeals grounds of Kordic's defence team, it did not change the sentence imposed on him.
The final ruling acquitted the second defendant, 45-year-old Cerkez, of 19 counts out of a total of 22 in his indictment. He was sentenced to six years in jail. The Appeals Chamber accepted more appeals grounds in the case of the second indictee. It confirms, however, that "Cerkez bears criminal responsibility for the imprisonment and unlawful confinement of Bosnian Muslim civilians" in Vitez in March and April 1993. These crimes was treated as crimes against humanity and serious breaches of the Geneva conventions.
Cerkez's lawyer Bozo Kovacic said that his defence team was satisfied with the final ruling.
Kovacic was dissatisfied, however, with the explanation of the Appeals Chamber that Croatia exercised overall control over the HVO and provided leadership and organisation of the HVO, and that there was an international armed conflict between Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina. In this context he said that he and especially another lawyer for Cerkez, Goran Mikulicic, invested huge efforts to refute such claims.
Kovacic expressed surprise at the fact that the Appeals Chamber allowed some of the appeals grounds of Kordic's defence team but it did not change the final sentence.
Both Kordic and Cerkez surrendered voluntarily to the ICTY on 6 October 1997. They were kept in custody in the Scheveningen detention centre. Earlier this month, the court ordered the immediate release of Cerkez as he had spent more time in custody than what the final sentence amounted to.