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During a public debate in Brcko about the right of victims to know who the war crimes perpetrators are, families said that there was a big interest in information from war-crimes trials.
“It is not true that there is no interest in what is happening at war-crimes trials. First and last names tell us who perpetrated war crimes. We should know them,” Sead Golic said.
The public debate was organised by the International Commission for the Missing Persons, ICMP, and Balkans Investigative Reporting Network, BIRN, in order to inform victims of war crimes about practices applied by certain judicial bodies in Bosnia and Herzegovina to omit identity of indictees, but also persons sentenced for war crimes under second instance verdicts, in official court documents.
Other courts and prosecutors’ offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina have begun implementing the same practice, depriving the general public of information about war crimes and responsibility of individuals.
For this reason BIRN initiated a campaign titled “STOP Censoring War Crimes” with the aim of stopping further withholding of information from trials.
During this debate the families of victims and the missing persons said that, in most cases they received information from trials through the electronic media. They condemned the decision not to issue recordings of entire hearings.
Ljubinka Zivanovic said that victims are more and more dissatisfied with the work of judicial institutions in Brcko. She said that the public no longer had access to indictments for war crimes.
“Indictments are no longer available to the public. It was important for us to see who was charged and for what crimes. It is no longer possible,” Zuvanovic explained.
They pointed out that they were particularly dissatisfied with their communication with the State Prosecution.
The families of victims and the missing persons signed a petition against withholding of information from trials, which was launched by BIRN in June this year.
Another public debate will be held in Prijedor next week.
