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The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has appealed to State authorities to adopt the budget for 2011 as soon as possible in order to enable it to work “uninterruptedly and at full capacity”.
The public announcement, issued by the State Court, was in response to an article titled “Outcry over limit to war crimes defence lawyers” published by the Balkans Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN. The announcement says that due to the failure to adopt the state-level budget, the Court has to apply the Council of Ministers’ decision on temporary financing.
“What we have here are very rigorous conditions specified under the Instruction issued by the Ministry of Finance and Treasury, which the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina was obliged to respect. On several occasions we pointed out that there was a real danger that we might not be able to fulfill our obligations, or more precisely discontinue paying the ex-officio attorneys,” the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina said.
“Bearing in mind the mentioned problems, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina appeals to the institutions to adopt the budget for 2011 as soon as possible in order to enable the Court to work uninterruptedly and at full capacity.”
The announcement says that the present “contractual obligations” of the Court amount to KM 195,000, which the Court is not able to pay. It further says that, realistically the amount will increase by an additional KM 300,000 within the next month.
“This means that the total obligations on these grounds will amount to about KM 500,000, which represents a big problem in the budget and may negatively impact the Court’s work and efficiency of trials. In other words, due to the lack of resources, payment of fees to ex-officio attorneys will be discontinued,” the State Court says.
Although the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has to save resources, Court officials say that this is one of the reasons for rejection of the proposals for the appointment of additional attorneys, “but it is by no means the only one”.
“Trial chambers assess each case individually and then decide whether one or two defence attorneys are needed,” the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina says.
In its article titled “Outcry over limit to war crimes defence lawyers” BIRN BiH mentioned that the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina considered that the presence of two attorneys was “sometimes unjustified” and led to huge expenses.
The article adds that “the State Court explains that additional defence attorneys may be granted if the Council deems it in the interest of providing an effective defence and the principles of a fair trial” and that, according to what the Court says, “the defence in war crimes cases will not be jeopardised by this decision in any way”.
