Local Justice – Zenica: Hard war crimes investigations

The head of the Department for investigation of the acts against humanity and values protected by international law in MUP Zenica-Doboj canton Ramiz Pivic told BIRN Justice Report that eight people are working on these investigations under the directions of the Cantonal Prosecution in Zenica.

”It is very hard to do this job. Many years have passed since these acts. Witnesses are dying or forget the facts and besides that you have witnesses refusing to cooperate. Many of them have returned to their hometowns, started with a certain way of living, started the business and maby even co-operate with the ones that commited the atrocities”, stated Pivic.
According to Pivic, his team is currently working on arround ten investigations.

“Investigations into these cases is extremly hard. Everything is based on the statements of the witnesses. Sometimes we collect 20 statements to gain certain facts. It is toughest to work on the individual murders of civilians. It is often the case that someone killed  people in an isolated house and then torched the house. Everything there is unknown. The case can be succesfully closed only if you have an insider,” explain Pivic.

Easy investigations according to Pivic’s statement are related to ”shelling incidents.”

Although Pivic stressed that the work conditions are ”good“ and that his team do have satisfactory co-operation with the cantonal prosecution, he added that there is an unadequate number of prosecutors that could process police reports and archive research and that circumstances ”influence the speed of the investigations.”

‘’In most war crimes cases we do not have material evidence in police investigations. Some things are collected when we do exumations but for the perpetrator itself almost never,” add Pivic.

The Department for the investigation of war crimes in Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP) in Zenica-Doboj Canton, according to Pivic, is achieving ”correct” co-operation with police bodies in both entities.

‘’We were in Han Pijesak recently and we go to Vlasenica as well. When we request they bring us the witness and we conduct the interview. That works but the problem is that the witnesses do not say too much. Nevertheless, sentence by sentence and we fill up the mosaic“ said Pivic.

Pivic added that the witness protection system forseen by the law is ”imperfect” considering it is forseen only during the trial.

‘’So far we offered protection to few witnesses but they have not accepted it yet,” stated Pivic and added that the MUP is trying to protect the witnesses by taking the statements in the field in ”houses and backyards using mobile equipment” or by bringing the witnesses into the MUP headquarters.

Dz.S.