The Bosnian Foreign Ministry issued a warning on Tuesday, calling on “all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina who were in any way involved in the defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the period from 1992 to the end of 1995 not to travel to the Republic of Serbia until further notice”.

“The warning is issued due to the risk of arrests and trials in the Republic of Serbia on war crimes charges, and on the basis of previous cases of arrests of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s citizens against whom no proceedings are being conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina or who have not been charged with war crimes by Bosnia and Herzegovina’s judicial institutions,” the Foreign Ministry said.

Two members of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, Sefik Dzaferovic and Zeljko Komsic, said in a joint statement that the arrest of Vranj was “abusing the principle of universal jurisdiction in the prosecution of war crimes”.

“The fact that, on the one hand, the Serbian authorities are protecting convicted [Bosnian Serb] war criminal Novak Djukic, as well as a number of suspects in the Srebrenica genocide and other crimes, and on the other hand continuously arresting members of the [wartime] Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina’s armed and police forces, clearly indicates that the real goal is not prosecution of war crimes, but selective persecution with political motives,” Dzaferovic and Komsic said.

BIRN’s fact-check of some of those claims shows that Serbia can justify Vranj’s arrest in legal terms, but that its actions in such cases have been damaging relations with neighbouring former Yugoslav states.

Are Bosnian citizens who fought against Serb forces in the 1992-95 war in Bosnia being targeted for arrest if they visit Serbia?

A Serbian border police officer. Photo: mup.gov.rs.

There have been few such arrests, although it’s estimated that several thousand Bosnians enter Serbia each week. In the past four years, from 2018 to 2021, three Bosnian war veterans have been arrested tried to cross the border from Bosnia and Herzegovina into Serbia.

In July 2018, Serbian police arrested the wartime commander of a military prison in Hrasnica near Sarajevo, Husein Mujanovic, and in November 2019, they arrested former soldier Osman Osmanovic.

The most famous case in which a Bosnian citizen was arrested over crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina was case of Ilija Jurisic, a Bosnian ex-policemen accused of an attack on the retreating Yugoslav People’s Army in the Bosnian town of Tuzla in 1992. He was acquitted in a Belgrade court in 2016 after a legal battle that had lasted since 2007, when he was arrested at Belgrade airport.

Is it lawful for Serbia to prosecute the Edin Vranj case?

According to the country’s Law on the Organisation and Jurisdiction of State Authorities in War Crimes Proceedings, Serbia can charge suspects with criminal acts “which were committed on the territory of the former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, regardless of the nationality of the perpetrator or victim”.

This legislation gives Serbia universal jurisdiction to prosecute any crimes committed anywhere in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s wars.

The Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre said in an analysis published in 2018 that “according to the principle of universal jurisdiction, conducting investigations and filing charges against foreign nationals is, legally speaking, possible”.

“However, the practice of prosecuting nationals from other countries of the former Yugoslavia does deserve criticism, because such a practice runs contrary to the very foundations of regional cooperation – namely, mutual trust and respect and avoidance of legal uncertainties for nationals of the former Yugoslavia successor states,” the Humanitarian Law Centre added.

Serbia’s claims to have universal jurisdiction have angered Croatia as well as Bosnia and Herzegovina, which could hinder Belgrade’s progress towards EU membership.

Is Serbia protecting Novak Djukic and other people wanted by Bosnia for war crimes?

The offices of Belgrade Higher Court’s War Crimes Department and Prosecutor’s Office for War Crimes. Photo: BIRN.

Djukic, the wartime commander of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Ozren Tactical Group, was convicted in Bosnia of ordering the shelling of the Bosnian town of Tuzla in May 1995, killing 71 people.

He has Serbian citizenship and fled to Serbia in 2014 instead of going to serve his sentence. Bosnia asked Serbia to take over the enforcement of the verdict under a legal cooperation agreement between the two countries.

But due to Djukic’s medical condition, Belgrade Higher Court has repeatedly postponed the case for five years. Meanwhile the Serbian Defence Ministry got involved in promoting a book that claimed the charges against Djukic were false.

Several Bosnian Serbs who have been accused or indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity or genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina now live freely in Serbia as they have Serbian citizenship and cannot be extradited for these offences.

A recent case involved Mirko Vrucinic, a former police chief who was on trial in Bosnia for committing crimes against humanity in 1992 in Sanski Most.

Vrucinic failed to appear for a hearing in August 2020 as he had fled to Serbia. The Bosnian state court then found that Vrucinic was officially made a Serbian citizen in September 2020, shielding him from extradition.

Why doesn’t Serbia extradite war crimes suspects to Bosnia and Herzegovina?

According to Serbia’s Law on International Legal Assistance in Criminal Matters, one of the conditions for Serbia to extradite someone is for the person to be a foreign citizen, not a citizen of Serbia. This has allowed some war crime suspects and defendants in Bosnia and Herzegovina to avoid criminal proceedings or prison sentences by fleeing to Serbia and getting (or already having) Serbian citizenship.

Serbia has additional agreements with various other countries on judicial cooperation and issues of extradition. One was made with Bosnia and Herzegovina in 2013. According to that agreement Serbia can extradite its citizens to Bosnia and vice versa for crimes of organised crime, corruption and money laundering.

The agreement says that this can also be applied also to “other grave criminal acts”, but not to the offences of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes”. Serbian law does however compel the country to extradite suspected war criminals to the UN’s international tribunal in The Hague.