Originally issued in 1995, the indictment charges the former member of the Jokeri--an HVO unit--with murder, abuse and rape. Since nine years passed and the accused Bralo hadn’t been arrested, prosecutors asked the court to unseal his indictment.

At the request of the Office of the Prosecution, the 1995 indictment against former HVO member Miroslav Bralo was unsealed.

The indictment was under seal (the prosecution’s usual practice) to prevent the accused from absconding once he learned the Tribunal had charged him with war crimes. However, since the accused Bralo has not been arrested in the past nine years, the Office of the Prosecutor asked the court to unseal and make public his indictment, OTP spokesperson Florence Hartmann said today.

Miroslav Bralo, former member of the Jokeri unit that was operating in the Vitez area, is charged with the torture and murder of three Bosniaks, the abuse of a group of Bosniak civilians he was escorting to dig trenches, and the multiple rape and torture of a Bosniak woman at his unit's base in Nadioci in May 1993. His crimes have been qualified as grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions and violations of the laws and customs of war.

Bralo's commander at the time, Anto Furundzija, was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 1998 for the torture and rape Bralo (nicknamed Cicko) committed. Furundzija was found guilty of aiding the commission of the crime because he was present when it was committed yet did nothing to prevent or punish it.

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