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In its public announcement the State Prosecution says that, as per warrants issued by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, 111 exhumations have been conducted at various locations all over Bosnia and Herzegovina since the beginning of this year.
The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina points out that the dynamics and promptness of exhumation processes directly depend on the availability of numerous officials at a certain location and on a specific date. It said that difficulties arise due to other obligations that some of the participants have, adding that this also leads to the prolonging of exhumation dates.
“The lack of experts, court medicine experts, is a particularly evident problem, as there are only a few of those experts in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The fact that the agencies and institutions, which participate in those processes, lack personnel, as well as material and technical resources, for field tasks, accompanied by a limited number of authorized officials, pose obstacles to this process,” the State Prosecution’s announcement says.
The Prosecution says that the financing of the exhumation process was determined under an agreement between the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Institute for the Missing Persons of Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the financial resources for exhumations have not been paid to this institution.
“All these facts slow down the execution of orders related to exhumations and identification processes. Nevertheless, despite the mentioned difficulties, the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Special Section for War Crimes have achieved notable results in the search for the missing persons over the past nine months and carried out a number of exhumations at various locations all over Bosnia and Herzegovina,” the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina said in its announcement.
The State Prosecution works with the Institute for the Missing Persons of Bosnia and Herzegovina, International Commission for the Search for the Missing Persons, State Investigation and Protection Agency, SIPA, law enforcement agencies from the Entities and Brcko District, specialized institutions for the execution of specific technical activities and court experts in various fields, while executing tasks related to the exhumation process.
