Over 65 percent of verdicts handed down for domestic violence against female partners in the last ten years in the Tuzla Canton were suspended prison terms. Earlier reports of victims or the presence of children in violence usually did not affect the amount of the sentence, Detektor’s research shows.
Written by: Azra Husarić Omerović
In the summer of 2020, Hana called the police from her mother’s house because she was afraid of her husband, who insulted and threatened her. The day after, instead of taking the abuser away from the victim, Hana was beaten in a public place.
Photo: The most frequently imposed sanctions for domestic violence in TK
On the second day after reporting to the police, her husband broke the window of the car she was driving with an ax and pulled her out of the vehicle, holding a knife to her throat. When she broke away and started to run away, he hit her with his car, continued to beat her in the canal, and then put her in his car. He didn’t even mind the passerby who tried to help her.
“He began to hit her with his hands and feet on various parts of her body, hitting her once in the mouth with a boxer while she was lying in the canal,” the judgment states, among other things, the details of which Detektor does not disclose due to the cruelty of the description of the crime committed.
Hana, which is not her real name, was beaten and raped twice in that car, once while she was unconscious.
She is one of dozens of victims of domestic violence who have been let down by the system in Tuzla Canton.
Her identity, as well as the identity of other victims from the verdicts, was protected by Detektor so that they would not be exposed to condemnations, pressures or new threats. The victims in these cases have not been contacted for interviews.
Detektor analyzed 258 final verdicts for domestic violence in which the victim was a partner, which were handed down by seven municipal courts in the Tuzla Canton in the last ten years, starting in 2015.
A months-long research during which more than 300 judgments of all cases of domestic violence before the courts in Tuzla Canton were collected and analyzed revealed that every fourth woman from 258 cases reported domestic violence before it repeated or worsened.
The research also showed that in more than 38 percent of cases, domestic abusers had already been punished before, which was considered an aggravating circumstance, but the courts in over 65 percent of cases imposed suspended sentences, which left them free.
In 37 percent of cases, children were present at the violence or were direct victims of violence, which the courts did not always appreciate as an aggravating circumstance.
“For the victims, this is proof of what the abuser threatened them with and what he told them: ‘I am not afraid of the police or the court. No one can do anything to me’. Because the victim cannot understand the difficulty and slowness of proving a criminal offense and respect for procedures,” Danijela Huremović, head of the Viva žene Tuzla safe house, said of the research findings.
Ružica Jukić, judge of the Municipal Court in Tuzla, whose work practice was also analyzed by Detektor, admits that the previous practice of the courts was bad, but blames it solely on the Cantonal Court, which shaped the penal policy by reducing the judgments of the municipal courts in the appeal procedure.
“The municipal court cannot determine the penal policy, but the cantonal court must take the position that they are punished more severely. The only way, in my opinion, can (…) be done to improve the position of the victim, that is the punishment, because with suspended sentences, the victims are afraid to report again if they will receive a suspended sentence again”, she said.
Jukić is of the opinion that the level of sanctions must be tightened, but also that society should provide protection to victims.
“I would say to all victims if you have reported it once, never be with that person, never, because abusers do not forgive reporting to the police. This has been proven. They can only be worse,” she said.
This research was started after three horrific murders in the Tuzla Canton – Nizama Hećimović in Gradačac in August 2023, Amra Kahrimanović in Tuzla in February 2024, and Inela Selimović in Kalesija in February 2025. Investigations in the cases of Hećimović and Selimović showed that the victims had previously reported the abusers to the institutions, but they did not receive protection.
The research was carried out on the basis of judgments received on requests for free access to information to all courts in the Tuzla Canton. The municipal court in Gradačac is the only court that rejected the request for delivery of verdicts. That court granted access only to the list of cases, without access to the details of the verdict, which made their analysis impossible.
The second rape of Hana followed despite persistent resistance, after she refused to reconcile with her husband in the car, in the wooded part of the settlement where he drove them. The verdict describes the high degree of brutality the abuser used on the victim, which Detektor decided not to publish.
The prescribed punishment, by the then valid Criminal Code of the Federation of BiH, for rape is in the range of one to ten years in prison. In cases where the violence was committed in a particularly cruel or humiliating manner, or if multiple sexual acts were committed, the penalty is from three to 15 years in prison.
In Hana’s case, in June 2021, the court sentenced the abuser to two years for rape and one year for domestic violence, and in unification sentenced the perpetrator to two and a half years in prison.
In this case, as stated in the verdict, Judge Ibrahim Bubić took as a mitigating circumstance the fact that he was emotionally attached to the victim and that he had a need to maintain sexual relations because, as stated in the verdict, the victim and the abuser had sexual relations during the period of the breakup of the marriage union.
“Which obviously created the need for the accused to maintain such relationships even at a time when the injured party was not willing”, it is stated in the mitigating circumstances of this verdict.
In the appeal procedure against this verdict, the Cantonal Court in Tuzla increased the sentence by four months – to two years and ten months.
“The very fact that even the judges who, for example, pronounce these types of sentences clearly do not know the problem clearly enough, and then this is actually the cause of such measures and such weaker sentences that do not hit the target and do not actually solve the issue of domestic violence at its core”, believes Elmir Ibralić, a psychologist at the safe house Viva žene Tuzla.
He adds that from the practice of working in a safe house, they notice a significant increase in reports of domestic violence, noting that the whole society has a responsibility in reporting and preventing violence.
“It’s also about the fact that women are encouraged, but I think it’s about the fact that general violence has increased at all levels of society from the individual family level to some systemic level in institutions,” he said.
BiH has been a signatory to the Istanbul Convention since 2013, which makes it one of the first member states of the Council of Europe to take on the obligations of the convention, which mandates the introduction of concrete measures to protect women, victims of violence.
The supervision of the implementation of the Convention is in the hands of the Expert Group of the Council of Europe for the fight against violence against women (GREVIO), which in its report for BiH from 2022 praised the country for the adoption of the law, but severely criticized it for its poor application in practice.
The report draws special attention to prosecutorial and judicial practices in which the use of plea agreements, light sentences for perpetrators, suspension of investigations after the victim withdraws his statement, and frequent conditional sentences are widespread.
Detektor’s research shows that Hana is among the nearly 25 percent of victims who reported domestic violence before it happened again or worsened. Judge Bubić did not respond to Detektor’s request to discuss this verdict.
institutions did not respond to women’s reports of violence and threats, Detektor’s research shows.
In the case from 2023 analyzed by Detektor, the abuser locked his wife in the toilet, and with the words that they would die together, stabbed her in the neck and then himself. The wife managed to find the key and escape from the house, after which she survived with quick medical intervention, as did the abuser.
The Cantonal Court in Tuzla sentenced him to one year in prison for attempted murder, using the institute of reduced punishment due to extenuating circumstances, including the fact that he had no convictions and was mentally impaired at the time of the crime.
The verdict states that the court did not find any aggravating circumstances, even though the victim had previously reported the violence and fear to the police. The verdict also states that in one statement, after she said she was afraid because of the threat of a knife and asked for help, the policeman replied to the victim that she should “calm down a bit”.
Judge of the Cantonal Court Samir Jusičić remembered this verdict in an interview for Detektor, explaining that he acted in that case. He explains that there was no appeal against the sentence.
“When you talk about that specific case, it was about an attempted murder and I would now make one difference because compared to, as we speak in our criminal law terminology, about the completed criminal act of murder, the punishment for an attempt is significantly less,” said Jusičić.
According to the FBiH Criminal Code, for attempted murder, the punishment is determined by a combination of the provisions on murder and attempt, that is, the punishment will be within the limits of the punishment for murder or less.
Elmir Ibralić, Viva žena’s lawyer, believes that larger sentences could prevent attempted murders and murders.
The case in mid-February 2025, when Emir Selimović from Kalesija killed his wife Inela and their minor son, speaks of the failure of the system. He was arrested a few days later, and during the criminal first-instance proceedings, he denied guilt. The Cantonal Court in Tuzla sentenced him to 45 years in early September.
Two weeks before the murder, Inela reported her husband to the police for domestic violence, and police officers Samir Valjevac and Mensur Nuhanović went to the field. At the moment, the procedure is ongoing against them for not taking the actions that are mandatory with the aim of implementing protective measures.
The research also showed that seven thugs convicted of murder or attempted murder had previous convictions.
The number of murders of women in this canton is higher because in the last ten years there have been at least five murders after which the perpetrators committed suicide, which is why no proceedings were taken, according to research by the Cure Foundation.
One of the cases in this statistic was the murder of Nizama Hećimović on August 11, 2023, which was watched live by tens of thousands of people on the Instagram social network. The killer Nermin Sulejmanović was never held accountable because he committed suicide.
Nizama had previously reported the violence, but the judge of the Municipal Court in Gradačac, Lejla Numanović, rejected the request of the police, who asked for a restraining order against Sulejmanović.
The Disciplinary Prosecutor’s Office filed a case against Judge Numanović due to negligence in drafting, where parts were copied from another decision of a factually similar case, but the Disciplinary Commission of the High Judicial and Prosecutor’s Office rejected it as unfounded. This decision is final.
(TYPE/Source: Detektor.ba/Author: Azra Husarić Omerović/Photo: Illustration)
