Bosnian Prosecution Demands Higher Sentences for Terror Plotters

The Bosnian prosecution launched an appeal on Tuesday against the verdict sentencing Maksim Bozic to four years in prison and Edin Hastor to two-and-a-half years for planning terrorist attacks, calling on the state court's appeals chamber to raise their sentences.

Bozic and Hastor were convicted in a first-instance verdict in July this year of planning attacks on the State Investigation and Protection Agency building in East Sarajevo and the Tuzla Canton's interior ministry building.

Bozic was found to have planned and prepared the attack on the two buildings, while Hastor was found to have stored the illegally-acquired weapons and ammunition for the attack in his family home.

Prosecutor Cazim Hasanspahic said that the defendants methodically amassed weapons to carry out the attacks, which they planned for a year.

He said that no one was harmed only because the attacks were thwarted by investigators.

"In no other field is prevention as important as in terrorism. Through an appropriate reaction by investigative bodies, Bosnia and Herzegovina showed that it acted preventively and this case was a result of that," Hasanspahic said.

The two men's defence lawyers meanwhile appealed for an acquittal.

Bozic told the court that it everyone knew that he was not guilty and that he was tired of spending his life explaining whether he had tried to kill someone.

Hastor said that in the past he had defended Bosnia and Herzegovina and had become disabled as a result, but that he never had the intention to attack the state that he had defended.

The Bosnian stage court's appeals chamber will hand down its ruling at a later date.