Bosnian Judges’ and Prosecutors’ War Records Face Checks

Bosnian’s top judicial body, the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, HJPC, said on Thursday that it will request information on investigations into judges and prosecutors after a complaint from the Justice Ministry war crimes centre in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska.

The Republika Srpska Justice Ministry’s Centre for Research on War, War Crimes and Missing Persons complained to the HJPC earlier this month, accusing nine judges and six prosecutors of having discriminated against Serbs in war crimes cases.

It claimed that the judges and prosecutors worked as military judges during the war, based on a decree from the wartime Bosnian presidency, and that that some of them were military judges in wartime prison camps where Serbs were detained.

The HJPC is also asking to be allowed to sack judges and prosecutors without disciplinary hearings.

“We shall ask the Ministry of Justice of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Council of Ministers and the Parliamentary Assembly of Bosnia and Herzegovina to amend the Law on the HJPC, via an urgent procedure, in order to introduce the exceptional possibility of releasing judges or prosecutors from their duties without the need to conduct a disciplinary procedure against them,” the HJPC said.

Among those accused of bias by the Bosnian Serbs is judge Saban Maksumic, who was on the judging panel in the trial of the Bosnian Army’s former Srebrenica commander Naser Oric, who was acquitted by the state court this month of killing Serb prisoners of war. The other two judges on the panel were Serbs.

The Oric verdict sparked anger among Bosnian Serb political leaders.

The HJPC’s president, Milan Tegeltija, said the information submitted by the Bosnian Serbs was “very serious and delicate”.

“We did not participate in the appointment of those people, so we cannot dismiss them without a disciplinary procedure. A disciplinary procedure could only result from criminal proceedings against them,” Tegeltija said.

A few members of the HJPC disagreed with the proposal.

“This is an arbitrary and dangerous route,” said judge Goran Nezirovic.

The HJPC is also asking for legal changes to be proposed to parliament in order to enable it to dismiss unsuitable judges by a two-thirds majority.

It is further asking courts to provide data on the ethnicity of people who have been acquitted and convicted of war crimes under second-instance verdicts, the legal classification of the crimes for which they have been convicted and the duration of their imprisonment sentences.

The association of Bosnian court judges told BIRN that it was unhappy with the HJPC’s course of action.

“This decision has led to permanent uncertainty for certain judges and disrupted the trust of citizens in justice and the independence of the judiciary,” the association said in a statement.