Enver Buza

The appeals chamber of the Bosnian state court found Enver Buza guilty on Friday of failing to order an investigation after members of the Bosnian Army's Prozor Independent Battalion killed 27 civilians in Uzdol on September 14, 1993, including women, children and elderly people.

However, the court reduced his prison sentence from 12 years to eight years.

The retrial of Enver Buza, the former commander of the Bosnian Army's Independent Prozor Battalion, began on Thursday at the state court in Sarajevo.

Buza is being retried after the first-instance verdict sentencing him to 12 years in prison for wartime crimes was quashed on appeal.

The appeals chamber of the Bosnian state court on Thursday upheld an appeal from Enver Buza, former commander of the Independent Battalion Prozor of the Bosnian Army, and quashed the first-instance verdict that sentenced him to 12 years in prison for wartime crimes in Uzdol, near the town of Prozor, in 1993.

The court said that Buza should be retried.

The Bosnian state court in Sarajevo on Monday found Enver Buza, the former commander of the Bosnian Army's Independent Prozor Battalion, guilty of contravening provisions of international humanitarian law on the protection of civilians during wartime, and sentenced him to 12 years in prison.

Enver Buza's defence urged the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo on Tuesday to acquit him, arguing that his responsibility for the killings of Bosnian Croats in the village of Uzdol in the Prozor municipality in 1993 had not been proved during the trial.

In closing arguments at the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo on Tuesday, the prosecution argued that former Bosnian Army battalion commander Enver Buza should be found guilty and given the harshest possible penalty.