The panel of judges earlier accepted a plea bargain agreement between Handzic and prosecutors in this case who proposed that the prison sentence for him should range between five and ten years.
Handzic, who was a deputy commander of the 307th brigade of the (pro-Bosniak) Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, saw to it that captured local Croats were dispatched to the front-line to dig trenches and he failed to punish army soldiers who had killed and tortured captured civilians and members of the Croatian Defence Council (HVO).
The court established that the troops under Handzic's control killed Mario Subasic and Vinko Ivkovic after they were detained in a local elementary school and that Bosnian Army troops also committed crimes against Croats detained at the local stadium.
Handzic was charged with the atrocities against Bugojno Croats in a case together with Nisvet Gasal, Musajb Kukavica and Senad Dautovic, former military and police officers of the Bosnian Army forces that were controlling the situation in that central Bosnian town in the 1993 during the Bosniak-Croat conflict.
Under the plea bargain agreement, Handzic also acceded to testify against the other three suspects.
Handzic said that detained Croats were dispatched to dig tranches under the order of high-ranking officers of the Sector West of the Bosnian Army and with the consent of the war-time command of Bugojno. He, thus, implicated the responsibility of the war-time Bugojno mayor Dzevad Mlaco and the current Bosnian defence minister and former Sector West commander, Selmo Cikotic, who have already appeared as witnesses at the trial of the above-mentioned former army and police officers.
Handzic's confession is still a classified document for the interest of the investigation.
However, his confession seems to be helpful for efforts to find the sites where several tens of local Croats, who have been registered as missing so far, were buried after they were killed in 1993.
A detention was set for Handzic at today's sentencing hearing and he will stay behind bars pending a final judgement in his case.