Vinko Martinovic alias Stela was arrested in Mostar on Wednesday on a warrant issued by Croatia over the 1996 murder in Mostar for which the Croatian Supreme Court sentenced Martinovic to 10 years in prison in 2020.

Martinovic’s arrest was confirmed by the Bosnia and Herzegovina state investigation agency (SIPA).

In 2016, Zagreb County Court delivered a guilty verdict against Martinovic and sentenced him to seven years in jail for the murder of Jasmina Djukic in Mostar in 1996, who was killed by Martinovic and his accomplices to obtain her flat which they sold after her execution.

Martinovic, previously convicted of war crimes against Bosniaks, was released from an Italian prison in January 2012 after serving two-thirds of his 18-year prison sentence handed down by the Hague war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

Two months after his release in 2012, he was arrested at a Croatian-Bosnian border crossing on a warrant issued by the Zagreb County Court in 2008. In 1998, the Zagreb County Court accused Martinovic of the Djukic murder and that same year sentenced him to eight years’ imprisonment pending appeal, but five days before his transfer to the Hague tribunal in August 1999, the Supreme Court quashed the ruling and ordered a retrial. The Croatian Supreme Court ordered the retrial after it upheld an appeal by the prosecution against the acquittal rendered by the Zagreb County Court in 2013.

After the Zagreb court delivered the guilty verdict in November 2016, Martinovic fled Croatia. In 2020, the Supreme Court imposed a longer sentence, that is 10 years, for that crime.