Milan Lukić transferred to Estonia to serve sentence

Milan Lukić, former leader of a group of local Bosnian Serb paramilitaries in the south-eastern Bosnian town of Višegrad, was transferred on Monday, 10 February to Estonia to serve his sentence. 

Milan Lukić was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on 20 July 2009, and his sentence was affirmed by the ICTY Appeals Chamber on 4 December 2012.  Lukić was convicted for crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war committed in Višegrad during the 1992-1995 conflict.

On 1 July 2013, pursuant to Security Council Resolution 1966 (2010), the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) assumed the ICTY’s responsibilities regarding the supervision of enforcement of sentences. Persons convicted by the ICTY or MICT do not serve their sentence in the United Nations Detention Unit as it is a remand centre. Sentences are served outside the Netherlands in one of the 17 States that have signed agreements on the enforcement of sentences with the United Nations. Milan Lukić is the second ICTY convicted person to be transferred by the MICT to an Enforcement State.

The Mechanism commends the Estonian authorities for their continued support in the enforcement of sentences.