Meeting of BiH and Hague Tribunal Judges

Hilmo Vucinic, judge with the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, said it was very important to preserve the Hague Tribunal’s experiences and use its knowledge- gained over many years- the evidence it had accumulated and proven facts before courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“I think the direct communication between us, the judges, is the right way towards harmonizing the court practices,” Vucinic said.

In addition to joint meetings, translated transcripts of court proceedings held at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in the Hague will be submitted to Bosnia and financing of additional support staff working with state-level judicial institutions will be provided as part of the project.

Today’s meeting was attended by about 30 judges from Bosnia and Herzegovina and judges Fausto Pocar and Bakone Justice Molota of the Hague Tribunal. The meeting participants discussed the practices related to publishing of certain types of evidence, responsibility of supervisors for the work done by their subordinates and work with special witnesses.

“The exchange of experiences is unique. So are the other aspects of this project, such as the employment of nine civil servants with judicial institutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which will additionally improve war crimes processing,” said Gary Robins, Chief of the OSCE Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As said at the meeting, the courts in this region are expected to intensify their efforts, considering the fact that the Hague Tribunal intends to complete all of the cases by the end of 2014.

Responding to journalists’ questions, judge Moloto stressed that the time for war crimes processing was not limited, adding the trials would be conducted for as long as it was necessary and there were suspects to be processed.

The “Justice and War Crimes” project covers the other countries in the region as well. It is financed by the EU. The project is implemented by the OSCE’s office for democratic institutions and human rights, ODIHR, in partnership with the Hague Tribunal, UN’s Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, UNICRI, and OSCE offices in the region.

On Thursday, December 9, the Hague Tribunal submitted more than 1,000 pages of trial transcripts to prosecutors’ offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia in order to support their war crimes processing capacities.

The Tribunal began providing transcripts in local languages as of October. Before that, transcripts were only available in English and French. It is expected that the Tribunal will eventually submit at least 60,000 pages of material.