Mevlid Jasarevic: US Seeks Extradition Under 1901 Treaty
The US Embassy wants Bosnia to hand over a man who served 15 years for attacking its building, and the legal basis is a treaty signed with the Kingdom of Serbia.
The legal basis on which the United States is asking Bosnia and Herzegovina to hand over Mevlid Jasarevic was created in Belgrade more than a century ago: an extradition treaty between the Kingdom of Serbia and the US from 1901, which, according to the American Embassy, was taken over by the successor states. The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina held a hearing on detention pending extradition on October 27, the same day Jasarevic’s 15-year sentence for the attack on the US Embassy in Sarajevo expired.
As we reported earlier, the court acquitted him the day before of assaulting an official at the Vojkovici prison. What is new is that Washington now wants Bosnia not to release him but to hand him over to the American justice system.
What does the US want, and on what basis?
The Bosnian Ministry of Justice received the request, accompanied by a note from the US Embassy, the day before the hearing. The request is based on an indictment filed in 2012 by the federal district court for the District of Columbia, with ten counts: attempted murder of American officials and citizens, assault with dangerous and deadly weapons, damage to embassy property, endangering human lives and use of an automatic weapon.
Pretrial judge Jasmina Cosic Dedovic said at the hearing that the request calls for Jasarevic’s arrest, while prosecutor Nives Kanevcev clarified that the embassy is seeking temporary detention for the purpose of extradition proceedings. She added that the embassy relies on the 1901 treaty, which Bosnia has also ratified.
What do the prosecution and the defense say?
The Bosnian Prosecutor’s Office is seeking detention because of the risk of flight. According to Kanevcev, there is a concern that Jasarevic would not be available to Bosnian authorities if released, and RTRS reports that the prosecution also points to the gravity of the charges and the possible sentences.
His court-appointed defense attorney, Alma Tabakovic, raised several objections:
- the 1901 treaty does not cover acts of terrorism, and in her view everything Jasarevic is charged with contains elements of terrorism
- a person cannot be tried twice for the same act, regardless of how the offense is named
- the attack was carried out from the territory of Bosnia, so the principle of territoriality is not met
- detention cannot be an automatic consequence of a foreign state’s request
- the people in the embassy included Bosnian citizens, and the only person wounded was a police officer who is a Bosnian citizen, so there can be no talk of attempted murder of a US citizen
Tabakovic also said the defense received the Ministry of Justice documentation and the embassy’s note only the previous afternoon. She asked the court to reject the detention motion as unfounded and to conduct a regular extradition procedure.
What did Jasarevic tell the court?
According to Sarajevo media reports carried by N1, Jasarevic asked the judge to let him go for a month or two so he could be with his son, who is 16. He said that even much stronger people cannot run from the US, and that he answered for his actions, but that the man from Gornja Maoca, Nusret Imamovic, did not. Jasarevic claims Imamovic sent him to the embassy and armed him. About that man, Jasarevic said:
“(Former state prosecutor) Dubravko Campara released him, and now he is strolling around Syria and has a restaurant.”
He added that in 15 years in custody he radicalized no one and spent his time drawing.
Who decides, and what is known about the attack?
The extradition request will be decided by Bosnia’s Minister of Justice Davor Bunaza, while the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina decides on the motion for extradition detention. RTRS reports that the extradition decision is pending, and the court’s ruling on detention was not known at the time of writing.
The attack on the embassy lasted about 50 minutes, during which Jasarevic fired 105 rounds from an automatic rifle at the building and seriously wounded a police officer who was guarding it. RTRS gives October 28, 2011 as the date of the attack, while N1 writes about an attack in 2012. The year 2012 matches the American indictment, so the two may have been confused.
