ZAGREB, May 9, 2018 – A panel of judges at County Court in Velika Gorica has approved the extradition of Bosnia and Herzegovina national Alen Čamdžić to Tunisia where he is wanted in connection with the murder of Tunisian citizen Mohammad Zouari, an engineer with alleged ties to Hamas.
The court said on its website that all the legal prerequisites have been met for the extradition of Čamdžić, resident in Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina, to stand trial before a court in Tunisia on terrorism charges. If found guilty, he faces a prison term of three to 15 years.
With reference to the suspect’s objection to being extradited because the crime he is accused of carries a death penalty in Tunisia, the court said that under Tunisian basic law, the death penalty was replaced by a sentence of 20 years’ imprisonment. It added that the Croatian Justice Ministry had been told by Tunisian authorities that the death penalty had not been applied in Tunisia since 1992.
The extradition hearing was held behind closed doors. Čamdžić pleaded not guilty and objected to being extradited, while Croatian state prosecutors representing the applicant state did not attend. The defence will appeal to the Supreme Court.
Čamdžić was arrested at Zagreb airport on March 13 on an international arrest warrant issued by Interpol in Tunisia. Croatian media earlier quoted a Tunisian official as saying that two persons suspected of Zouari’s murder had been identified and one of them was arrested in Croatia in March.
Zouari, a member of Hamas’s military wing, was assassinated near his home in the Tunisian city of Sfax in December 2016.
