Bosnia’s War Crimes Strategy May Finally Speed up

By creating a centralized database of investigations, indictments and verdicts for war crimes and by distributing unfinished war crime investigations between all of Bosnia’s prosecutors’ offices, faster work on implementing the war crimes strategy has begun over the last 12 months.While judicial institutions admit that work in past years was too slow and laboured, they hope the process will become easier.By distributing remaining war crime cases – so that only complex cases remain at state level while all others go to entity and Brcko District courts – it should be possible to accelerate matters.There is also hope that with the naming of a new Chief Prosecutor, a more systematic approach will follow and war crimes will become more of a priority.Major EU investments in the courts planned for next year, and the possibility that a new Appeal Court will be formed, also suggest that the entire process can accelerate.On the other hand, the annual report of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council passed with many objections in Bosnia’s state parliament, many of them related to the pace of war crime prosecutions.The chairman of the Constitutional Committee of parliament said it was inexcusable that Strategy deadlines were constantly missed.Bosnia’s Council of Ministers adopted the war crimes strategy in December 2008. This foresaw the creation of a centralized database for all open war crimes within 30 days and their distribution among prosecutors’ offices.Complex cases were to remain at state level and wrap up within seven years, while all others were to be distributed to other prosecutions and be completed within 15 years.But the strategy has so far failed to make much difference, as the figures demonstrate.In the three years before the Strategy was adopted, Bosnia’s State Court issued 21 verdicts on war crimes, while in the next four years, it issued approximately 40 verdicts. A similar situation is evident in terms of the number of indictments.This year, the same number of indictments for war crimes was raised as in 2007 – six less than 2008, the year when the Strategy was adopted.Various demands of the Strategy have also not been met to date as deadlines have come and gone. “Funds to improve the work of courts, prosecutions and police agencies in war crimes cases”, based on recommendations of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, HJPC, have yet to be raised, for example.Achievements in 2012:On the other hand, the State Court says that this year it completed a centralized database of indictments and verdicts in all courts in the country, and that the process of determining the complexity and distribution of war crime investigations is also almost done.“The best indication of progress is the fact that since the Strategy was adopted, courts in the entities and Brcko district received 282 cases, 210 of which were in the last year alone,” Meddzida Kreso, the President of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, said.According to the HJPC, in the Republika Srpska, the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Brcko District, more than 600 investigations are ongoing and another 658 are ongoing at state level.Bosnia’s Justice Minister, Barisa Colak, and the HJPC president, Milorad Novkovic, told BIRN – Justice Report that they were content with the practice and pace of delegating less “complex” cases to the entity and Brcko courts, which they say has cut the burden on state level institutions and allowed for a faster resolution of cases.“Distributing cases is the only way to implement the [war crimes] Strategy, because the State Court and Prosecution cannot prosecute all the cases,” Novkovic said.His view is shared by the European Union delegation to Bosnia, which monitors the Strategy implementation supervisory board. Andy Mcguffie, spokesperson of the delegation, said he was happy with the results this year.“The acceleration in redistributing the backlog after almost three years of stalemate has contributed to a faster identifica