More time needed to prosecute most serious war crimes

The Bosnian state prosecution said they won’t be able to comply with the deadline of resolving their most complex cases by the end of 2015, and said they would request an extension of the deadline.

“It’s obvious that we won’t be able to meet this deadline – we’ve already discussed this and will seek a deadline extension of at least three more years to resolve these cases,” Gordana Tadic, the head of the state court’s war crimes department told BIRN last month.

Tadic said the state court currently has 616 unresolved war crimes cases.

The National Strategy for War Crimes Processing was adopted by the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina in December 2008. The strategy envisages that complex war crimes cases are to be prosecuted at the state level within seven years, while other cases will be completed within fifteen years though prosecutorial offices in the entities and the district of Brcko.

In recent years, representatives of judicial institutions and international organizations which monitor the implementation of the strategy have criticized the slow prosecution of war crimes cases.

In 2011, Milorad Novkovic, the chairman of the supervisory board for the implementation of the strategy, explained why the prosecution of war crimes cases wasn’t proceeding as planned.

“Most of the circumstances are objective, but there is a part of these circumstances which call for the greater involvement of the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the prosecution offices of the entities. The supervisory board has concluded that it’s necessary for the state prosecution to be more involved with prosecutors, and that generally, the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina presents a bottleneck for the prosecution of war crimes,” Novkovic told BIRN in 2011.

Two years later, in an interview for BIRN-Justice Report, Novkovic said that not all of the aims of the strategy had been met and doubted whether the deadlines for resolving war crimes cases would be met.

New prosecutors speed up case processing

During 2012, the transfer of cases from state prosecutors to cantonal and district prosecutors sped up and additional funds were dedicated to their processing. By providing additional financial resources and employing new prosecutors and legal staff at all levels, work on war crimes cases has been expedited.

The state prosecution filed 57 indictments against 119 individuals in 2014, thanks in part to the increase in staff and resources. In prior years, when cases were handled by a smaller number of prosecutors, significantly less indictments were raised – an average of 21 per year.

“Last year we invested considerable efforts to reach these results, and this was primarily achieved by increasing the capacities of the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Thirteen new prosecutors started working in December 2013, and from March 15, 2014, five new prosecutors started their work,” Gordana Tadic said.

Thirty five new prosecutors are currently working on war crimes cases – however, Tadic says that even with this increased capacity, the state prosecution faces difficulties.

“Three prosecutors share one typist and not every prosecutor has an expert associate. We also lack investigators,” Tadic explained.

Representatives of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, say the state court which deals with war crimes trials doesn’t lack human resources, but suffers from a shortage of courtrooms.

“Problems with the number of courtrooms and the current number of cases already exist, and that’s a problem that will have to be resolved in the future,” Milan Tegeltija, the President of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, told BIRN last year.

The offices of the cantonal and district prosecutors also suffer from a lack of human resources. The prosecutors told BIRN that the IPA programme (Instruments for Pre-Accession of the European Union) helped them achieve better results.

“We believe these funds contributed significantly to speeding up the work on war crimes cases and we already have a significant increase in the resolution of cases,” prosecutor Munib Halilovic said at the 11th Conference of the Chief Prosecutors, while presenting the work of the state prosecution.

Work of cantonal prosecutors “not appreciated”

Munib Halilovic said prosecution offices with a small number of cases will conclude their cases during this year and the next. Branko Mitrovic, a prosecutor from Republika Srpska, said the prosecution offices in the Bosnian Serb entity still have 175 cases to resolve.

Halilovic and Mitrovic said one of the problems cantonal prosecutors face is the way cases are referred to them by the state prosecution.

The National Strategy for War Crimes Processing states that all war crimes cases are submitted to the Bosnian state court, which then determines whether it will be prosecuted at the state level, or a lower level. However, prosecutorial offices object to having cases sent to them after indictments have already been raised by the state court.

“We have absolutely nothing against the assignment of the cases, but please, if you can, send them while they are still in the investigation stage. Prosecutors who have received these indictments face big problems. It’s easier to raise one’s own indictment then to represent someone else’s. The problem is with the witnesses, because they have to be reacquainted with the prosecutor, then there’s the change of legal qualification,” Mitrovic said.

Mitrovic said that the cases transferred to them by the state court are simple and don’t need to be processed by the state prosecution.

“We are not working on crisis headquarters, organized criminal enterprise, genocide or command responsibility…All that has been left to the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But you shouldn’t resolve individual cases when you are burdened with a huge number of cases,” Mitrovic said.

Prosecutor Halilovic said the work on these cases isn’t appreciated, and that should change.

“This situation really puts cantonal prosecutors at a disadvantage. They spend the whole year in the courtroom. None of that work is appreciated,” Halilovic said.

The state prosecution has also been criticized for the slow processing of cases that have been transferred to them from the Hague Tribunal.

Gordana Tadic said that these cases have been resolved.

“We have brought these cases to an end, only eight cases against 28 persons remain. These cases were really brought to an end and we expect that almost all those cases will be brought to work by the end of the year. We gave priority to such cases during this year and last year,” Tadic said.