War Crimes Prosecutions Delayed, European Commission Warns

The latest European Commission country reports on Western Balkan states, published on Tuesday, highlight the continuing obstacles in prosecuting war crimes and compensating victims of the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia.

Montenegro: The report reveals that by the end of 2017, 154 decisions on claims for compensation had been finalised and a total amount of 1.48 million euros was paid to war victims and their relatives.

The report also urges Montenegro to take a more proactive approach in following up allegations of war crimes.

It says that out of eight new war crime cases opened by Montenegro’s Special Prosecutor’s Office, six are still in the preliminary investigation phase. Due to lack of evidence, charges were dropped in one of these cases.

“The judicial decisions reached so far have contained legal mistakes and shortcomings in the application of the international humanitarian law,” the report says, adding that charges of command responsibility, co-perpetration and aiding and abetting have so far not been brought by Montenegrin prosecutors.

Serbia: The report highlighted Belgrade’s non-cooperation in arresting two members of the Serbian Radical Party who were indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, for the contempt of court.

The report also says that the occasional questioning of the ICTY’s rulings by Serbian officials is “not helpful for the broader respect of the rule of law, for Serbia’s international obligations or for creating an environment in which war crimes cases can be processed calmly and effectively”.

In the report, the EU warns that adoption of Serbia’s new war crimes prosecutorial strategy has been “severely delayed” and that the strategy needs to establish “clear criteria for prioritising cases and timelines for their investigation and prosecution”.

The report specifies that only three new indictments for war crimes were filed in 2017 – all transferred from Bosnia and Herzegovina – while Serbia has 926 cases in the pre-investigative phase.

The Serbian authorities have also not filed a single indictment against senior military and police officials for war crimes.

While it mentions positive trends, the EU calls for the further improvement of Serbia’s cooperation with judiciaries in the region, as well as witness protection. The report also warns that Serbia’s legal framework is preventing a number of war crime victims from getting their rights, while wartime sexual violence is not being adequately addressed.

Kosovo: The report emphasises that only two prosecutors in Pristina’s Special Prosecution Office work on war crimes, while the lack of cooperation between the authorities of Kosovo and Serbia is “jeopardising access to justice” for victims.

“In cases where the suspects are ethnic Serbs, residing mainly in Serbia, mutual legal cooperation with Serbia remains effectively non-existent,” the report says.

It highlights significant concerns in the willingness of the Kosovo authorities to prosecute and judge war crimes former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA.

The report pinpoints preferential treatment of former KLA members in Kosovo’s prisons as one of the possible reasons for witnesses’ lack of willingness to testify against them.

While the report acknowledges that the Kosovo government has established procedures that enabled victims of wartime sexual violence to register for official status from February this year, it emphasises that this excludes anyone who experienced such violence after June 20, 1999.

Bosnia and Herzegovina: The European Commission report notes that fewer war crimes’ cases were prosecuted last year – “40 indictments filed against 69 suspects in 2017 compared to 72 indictments filed against 154 suspects in 2016”.

However, the report notices a positive trend in prosecuting wartime sexual violence – with final verdicts against 20 people – and in support for victims and witnesses provided at courts.

Bosnia currently has a huge backlog of unprocessed war crimes cases, and the report suggests that the country’s war crimes strategy needs to be amended so that “new criteria and timelines for processing the most complex cases are established” and cases are more efficenty distributed between higher- and lower-level courts.