Dragan Nikolić (26 April 1957 – 4 June 2018) was a Bosnian Serb army commander of the Sušica detention camp near

Vlasenica Vlasenica ( sr-Cyrl, Власеница) is a town and municipality in Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina. As of 2013, it has a population of 11,467 inhabitants, while the town of Vlasenica has a population of 7,228 inhabitants. Etymology ...

in eastern

Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina, sometimes known as Bosnia-Herzegovina and informally as Bosnia, is a country in Southeast Europe. Situated on the Balkans, Balkan Peninsula, it borders Serbia to the east, Montenegro to the southeast, and Croatia to th ...

who was charged with

war crimes A war crime is a violation of the laws of war that gives rise to individual criminal responsibility for actions by combatants in action, such as intentionally killing civilians or intentionally killing prisoners of war, torture, taking hos ...

. He was arrested in Bosnia and Herzegovina by the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) and taken to the Hague in Netherlands for trial. Nikolić argued that the sovereignty of Bosnia and Herzogovina was violated when he was abducted by SFOR rather than being voluntarily extradited. He contended that as a result the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) could not exercise jurisdiction over the case. The ICTY Appeals Chamber commented on the need to balance a legitimate expectation that someone accused of "universally condemned offences" be brought to justice "against the principle of State sovereignty and fundamental human rights of the accused".The Prosecutor v Dragan Nikolic, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Appeals Chamber, 5 June 2003 The Appeals Chamber found "no basis upon which jurisdiction should not be exercised". Following the

ICTY The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) was a body of the United Nations that was established to prosecute the war crimes that had been committed during the Yugoslav Wars and to try their perpetrators. The tribun ...

trial, he was sentenced to 23 years in prison on 18 December 2003. This was reduced to 20 years following a sentence appeal. 8,000 mainly

Bosniak The Bosniaks (, Cyrillic script, Cyrillic: Бошњаци, ; , ) are a South Slavs, South Slavic ethnic group native to the Southeast European historical region of Bosnia (region), Bosnia, today part of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and who sha ...

civilians were detained in the Sušica camp between May and October 1992. Nikolić was serving his sentence at a prison in

Italy Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land b ...

until he was granted early release in 2013. He died in Serbia in June 2018, aged 61, and was buried at

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* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Nikolic, Dragan 1957 births 2018 deaths People convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Serbs of Bosnia and Herzegovina convicted of crimes against humanity Serbian people imprisoned abroad Foreign nationals imprisoned in Italy People extradited from Bosnia and Herzegovina