Serb Families Protest Against ‘Biased’ Bosnian Judiciary

Around 150 relatives of Serb wartime victims and people missing since the 1990s conflict rallied outside the state judicial complex in the Bosnian capital and demanded to meet chief prosecutor Goran Salihovic to air their grievances.

Some carried placards with slogans reading “Enough humiliation” and “Brod [in northern Bosnia] is a town of camps and mass graves of Serb citizens”.

Nedeljko Mitrovic, president of the organisation Families of the Captured, Killed Fighters and Missing Civilians of Republika Srpska, said that the Bosnian prosecution must rethink its “inefficient and biased” role in the process of searching for missing Serbs.

Mitrovic alleged that the court and prosecution were copies of the Hague Tribunal, which he described as a “factory of injustice”, and said they were not contributing to reconciliation.

He said that Serb victims of the war believe that “everyone who committed a crime” should face justice.

“But we still have ten times more convictions against Serbs,” he complained.

Mitrovic also asked for the possibility that convicted war criminals could serve their sentences in whichever Bosnian entity they wanted.

The protesters ended their protest in less than an hour and left Sarajevo on buses after failing to meet the chief prosecutor.

“We were told the chief prosecutor would meet us. When we entered, prosecution officials greeted us and told us a deputy of some office would talk to us. That’s how far the humiliation goes. Unfortunately, we had no one to share our thoughts with, because the chief prosecutor and his deputy ran like cowards,” said Mitrovic.