They sold kilograms of cocaine, as well as other drugs

The High Court has reduced the sentences against two drug traffickers who were sentenced to six years in prison in the first instance. At least one of the Serbs is likely to be released soon – and will then have to leave Switzerland for eight years.

They sold almost ten kilograms of cocaine and more than 70 kilos of marijuana and hashish, thereby making hundreds of thousands of Swiss francs in sales. At the time, the Zuger Zeitung newspaper described the two Serbs and the Bosnian who stood before the Zug Criminal Court in July 2021 as the “Zug dealer trio”.

Bojan K.* (51) was sentenced to six years in prison in the first instance, and Dusan V.* (52) for five years and eleven months. Both appealed, and have achieved some success, as a recent decision of the Zug High Court shows: The court has reduced the sentence against Bojan K. by ten months, and that against Dusan V. by six months.

High Court calculates the penalty differently
The reason for the reduction are subtleties in the sentencing: in order to calculate the punishment, a court starts from the most serious offence, and then adds the sanctions of similar additional offences that an accused has committed. The court may only thereby include a maximum of half of the possible penalty, however. In the case of the dealer trio, the cocaine trading was the most serious act, alongside the acts of marijuana cultivation and sale.

Following this so-called ‘Principle of asperity', the criminal court added half of the maximum prison sentence for the marijuana offences. According to the judgment of the High Court, however, the acts were directed against the same legal interest as the cocaine trade:

"Therefore, it is justified – in deviation from the lower instance – to make an increase of only one third in the context of the asperity."

The Zug High Court also found the two Serbs guilty of dealing with cocaine, among other things. Symbolic image: Raphael Rohner

Five years and two months in prison for Bojan K., five years and five months for Dusan V. Due to lack of evidence, the court also acquitted Dusan V. of the charge of having delivered another kilo of cocaine.

Nevertheless, the reduction for both dealers is only a partial victory, Bojan K.'s defence lawyer had requested four years and three months in prison, that of Dusan V. two years and nine months. The High Court also confirmed the expulsion from Switzerland and Liechtenstein for a period of eight years. Bojan K., who has been in Switzerland since 1997, and Dusan V., who immigrated in 2015, had asked for the ban to be reduced to five years.

High Court refrains from expulsion of the third member of the trio
Above all, the 51-year-old Bojan K. will probably need to prepare for his expulsion sooner than later. According to the 71-page verdict, he has behaved in an exemplary manner in prison, and will probably soon be released conditionally, and will then have to leave the country.

The situation is different for the third member of the dealer trio. In a separate case this summer, the High Court accepted the appeal of the 45-year-old Bosnian and overturned his five-year expulsion from the country. As the man has lived in Switzerland for over 25 years, has a wife and children here and had been rejected by the family in his homeland, his interest in remaining outweighs that of the public in an expulsion, according to the High Court.

* Names changed