diff --git a/dspace-api/pom.xml b/dspace-api/pom.xml
index 32b9845f85..7ccd38e63e 100644
--- a/dspace-api/pom.xml
+++ b/dspace-api/pom.xml
@@ -446,7 +446,6 @@
         <dependency>
             <groupId>org.apache.httpcomponents</groupId>
             <artifactId>httpclient</artifactId>
-            <version>4.2.1</version>
         </dependency>
         <dependency>
             <groupId>org.apache.solr</groupId>
diff --git a/dspace-api/src/main/java/org/dspace/identifier/ezid/EZIDRequest.java b/dspace-api/src/main/java/org/dspace/identifier/ezid/EZIDRequest.java
index c3fc10bc07..e2d4d331ae 100644
--- a/dspace-api/src/main/java/org/dspace/identifier/ezid/EZIDRequest.java
+++ b/dspace-api/src/main/java/org/dspace/identifier/ezid/EZIDRequest.java
@@ -175,9 +175,7 @@ public class EZIDRequest
         request = new HttpPut(uri);
         if (null != metadata)
         {
-            try {
-                request.setEntity(new StringEntity(formatMetadata(metadata), UTF_8));
-            } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException ex) { /* SNH */ }
+            request.setEntity(new StringEntity(formatMetadata(metadata), UTF_8));
         }
         HttpResponse response = client.execute(request);
         return new EZIDResponse(response);
diff --git a/pom.xml b/pom.xml
index 431659edab..9d8b527443 100644
--- a/pom.xml
+++ b/pom.xml
@@ -1000,6 +1000,11 @@
             <artifactId>commons-httpclient</artifactId>
             <version>3.1</version>
          </dependency>
+	 <dependency>
+            <groupId>org.apache.httpcomponents</groupId>
+            <artifactId>httpclient</artifactId>
+            <version>4.3.5</version>
+         </dependency>
          <dependency>
              <groupId>org.slf4j</groupId>
              <artifactId>jcl-over-slf4j</artifactId>