Lajcak: Special Investigation Team for Srebrenica

In conversation with Justice Report, Miroslav Lajcak, High Representative for BiH, has spoken about war crimes processing, facing the past, judicial reform and Srebrenica.

Lajcak said that a special unit of the state prosecution would soon commence work in Srebrenica together with a team of international experts attached to it.

“Turkey and the Netherlands have already pledged financial resources that will enable us to have an international team of investigators come to Srebrenica,” Lajcak told Justice Report.

“These investigators have participated in activities on the territory of Srebrenica and they are familiar with the situation.

“We would like to have six international investigators working in Srebrenica and we have already secured resources for two. We have got some applicants and we need to undertake the selection process so that they can start working as soon as possible. BiH investigators have the expertise and they know what should be done. Our task will be to help them solve the problems that exist in the system,” Lajcak has said.

Lajcak says that a lack of adequate staff is one of the key problems in the work of local judicial authorities when it comes to war crimes processing.

“The current number of cases is close to 14,000, while the number of experts and investigators dealing with these cases is disproportionate. Under such conditions we would need more than a hundred years to process all war crime cases. If nothing is changed, the answers will be given by the time passing by, and not by justice,” said Lajcak in his interview with Justice Report.

The High Representative has announced that, at the beginning of September, there will be a round table event where representatives of the international community and local judicial authorities will talk about this and other problems, and debate how best to solve them.

The full text of the interview can be viewed at BIRN – Justice Report – www.bim.ba – on Monday, 6 August.