Prosecutors at BIRN War Crimes Conference Urge Cooperation

Prosecutors from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro told a conference on war crimes prosecution organised by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network on Thursday in Sarajevo that cooperation between states and international organisations is crucial for successfully bringing cases to court.

At the conference, which was also addressed by representatives from the OSCE, the EU-rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, EULEX and the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, prosecutors who usually debate behind closed doors spoke about challenges to war crimes prosecutions in the Balkans, particularly in light of the ICTY closing its doors next year.

Croatian deputy state attorney Jasmina Dolmagic said that “regional cooperation in absolutely indispensable” as many cases are cross-border ones.

“This is how Croatia prosecuted the war crimes committed in Srebrenica by the former members of the Scorpions [Serb paramilitary unit],” she said.

She explained how France did not want to extradite suspect Milorad Momic, who had joint French-Croatian citizenship to Serbia, but only to Croatia. After extradition, Croatia successfully prosecuted him using evidence and documents received from the Serbian prosecutor’s office.

Gordana Tadic, deputy to the chief prosecutor at the Bosnian state prosecution and head of its war crimes department, said that a large number of war crime cases have either suspects, witnesses or victims from other states, which “makes cases further complicated”.

“There is also a problem when one state takes a case from the other to meet the witness protection standards for persons coming from another state,” she explained.

Lidija Vukcevic, special prosecutor at the Montenegrin Special State Prosecutor’s Office, said that Montenegro has prosecuted six war crimes cases from the 1990s thanks to mutual agreements between prosecution offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro and Serbia.

Kevin Hughes, legal adviser to the chief prosecutor at the ICTY, said however that “political barriers” were preventing extraditions in the region.

Hughes argued that the documentation and evidence established by prosecutors and courts in the region should be shared and recognised as valid by other former Yugoslav countries in the “same way the ICTY evidence is used in courts across the region”.

Charles Hardaway, war crimes prosecutor at the EULEX mission in Kosovo, meanwhile highlighted “political obstacles” to prosecuting cases in Kosovo which require cooperation from Serbia.

“According to the laws, if EULEX needs something from the Serbian justice ministry, it first sends a demand to the Kosovo justice ministry. When the Serbian ministry receives an inquiry from the Kosovo one, you don’t have to be a genius to know what will happen: nothing,” he said.

He also said that Kosovo faced problems because it is not party to regional cooperation protocols.

“By not having access in regional mechanisms and agreements, Kosovo is left out. These are challenges that international prosecutors – locals in the future too – have to defeat,” he said.

The head of rule of law at the OSCE mission in Bosnia, Francesco de Sanctis, said that “one third of all war crimes cases” have either suspects, witnesses or victims living abroad, which make prosecutions more complicated.

The initial panel will be followed by one entitled ‘Are Transitional Justice Strategies a Way Forward?’, which will be addressed by Ivan Jovanovic, an expert in international humanitarian law, Goran Simic, professor of criminal law and transitional justice at the International University of Sarajevo, Nemanja Stjepanovic from the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre, Dzenana Karup Drusko from the Sarajevo-based Association for Transitional Justice, Responsibility and Remembrance, and Teuta Hoxha from Kosovo’s Youth Initiative for Human Rights.

As well as experts and prosecutors, 20 journalists from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia and Montenegro and Serbia are atending the conference. Following the conference, the journalists will have a two-day training course aimed at boosting their skills in transitional justice reporting.

As part of the training session, BIRN has launched its War Crimes Verdicts Map – an interactive tool intended to provide an overview of court rulings on the crimes that were committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

Comprising a total of 386 verdicts, it represents a unique database of publicly-available final judgements issued by national courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Serbia.

It also includes verdicts handed down by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague.

The conference and the training session are part of BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice initiative, funded by the European Commission, the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland and the Robert Bosch Stiftung.

The project aims to improve the general public’s understanding of transitional justice issues in former Yugoslav countries – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.