Ivica Divkovic: Investigations into the 100,000 killed and 260 detention camps

According to him, the data they collected on the 104,000 people who lost their lives, about 260 camps or detention centres, the approximately 40,000 persons who were subjected to torture or rape, two million people who fled their homes, itself speaks about the weight of the work.

Since 2005, the Centre has questioned around 8,300 witnesses, and filed almost 300 reports about the committed crimes and reported more than 1,000 suspects.

According to Divkovic, the Centre has enough investigators, who in groups of two to six people, work in six teams. The main difficulty in working with these cases is the huge lapse in time, the unavailability of witnesses and suspects, and inaccessibility of places where the crimes were committed.

The arguments presented in the courtrooms and the media about the blackmailing of SIPA’s investigators of witnesses is dismissed by Divkovic as speculation and he estimates that some witnesses are changing their testimonies under pressure from “certain circles”.

JR: What are the most common problems that you encounter in your work?

D: Investigation of war crimes is a specific type of work and the basic problem is that these events occurred 15 and 20 years before, and many of them have happened in places that are inaccessible now. It is suffice to say that the areas where we are sometimes searching and collecting the evidence are still zones of minefields and thus unsafe from that aspect.

The time that has passed has made some areas inaccessible to reach by car so it is often necessary to go several kilometres on foot to get the information or skeletal remains of those killed. In addition, in many areas there are no more villages and settlements at all so it is not possible to come across live witnesses and other evidence which is helpful in proving that the war crimes have happened.

So, actors, participants and witnesses are no longer present. On the other hand, given that 20 years has passed since some events, a certain number of participants are no longer alive, whether it comes to witnesses or the persons who have committed crimes.

JR: How big is the problem of the displacement of witnesses?

D: This is our major problem and we are often in a position to seek a mode when and how to reach them. We are often in a position to contact the witnesses who are located in Western Europe and even in America. We ask them when they will come and where we could conduct an interview. It is certain that the fact that these events happened long ago is problem for witnesses too, because they do not remember many events or they have forgotten key details.

JR: Furthermore many suspects are not in Bosnia and Herzegovina. How to you co-operate with neighboring states in locating the suspects?

D: When it comes to the unavailability of suspects, they are mostly in Montenegro, Serbia, Croatia, but also in some other countries. In the context of co-operation, we share information about where they are, although we have some situations where we think it might be more efficient. There are certain difficulties, in some areas perpetrators are considered to be heroes. Activities on the detection have been ongoing for 20 years, and there are situations where this co-operation is not on the highest level and more energy should be devoted to fulfill the task.

JR: How do you comment on the accusations of some witnesses that the SIPA investigators put pressure on them and extort testimonies from them by blackmail?

D: This is one of the problems which are, among other things, exposed in the media. During the testimonies and at the end, the witnesses are always asked whether they were satisfied with the behaviour of the members of the Agency. I can say that we have not had any witnesses who said they were not satisfied with the behavior of members of the SIPA. It seems to me that this is a certain form of speculation about the work of the State Investigation and Protection Agency. Based on the data we have collected by checks, we did not determine the ground for these objections.

JR: Whether these witnesses are more the victims or the insiders – what would be their reasons for making such claims?

D: By our estimation, the motives and reasons are different. I think it is the matter of different forms of pressure on witnesses in the sense that they withdraw the statement they originally gave. This may be the reason that some circles perform systematic pressure on witnesses in order to change the essence of things to another direction.

JR: How does the mechanism of witness protection work in practice?

D: I’m not sure that we have taken full advantage of all the mechanisms when it comes to protecting witnesses. SIPA is the first and only that has a department that deals with the protection of witnesses. So far, in over 600 cases witness protection has been used. Of course, not all of them were witnesses in cases of war crimes. Experience shows that we still have not mastered all the techniques and models that such protection offers and which the practice and theory in the West allows.

JR: Have there have been any cases of the relocation of witnesses in war crimes to other countries so far?

D: So far, we have not had a situation where someone was asked to be relocated to another country. There is a way to do it and there were such cases in the cases related to organised crime.

JR: Given that a large number of crimes have not been investigated and processed, do you consider that most of them can be resolved before the courts?

D: Here, we have to present basic statistical data on events between 1992 and 1995. Data that we and certain non-governmental organizations gathered says that about 104,000 persons lost their lives, we had about 260 camps or detention centres, about 40,000 persons were subjected to torture or rape – we talk here mostly about women – and about two million people have been displaced in some way, and about 50,000 are waiting to return.

It all speaks about the specific gravity of duties and tasks of all those who need to solve this problem. In this respect, the Council of Ministers and the state institutions drafted the State Strategy for Resolving War Crimes. The Strategy envisages that most of these cases should be resolved in the next 15 years, and the deadline for resolving the priority and complex war crimes cases is seven years.

I think SIPA is taking everything in its power to fulfill these tasks in close co-ordination with the State Prosecution. We have a very good pace in the execution of tasks, although we know that a very large number of cases are active. In the near future, a number of minor cases are envisaged to be transferred to the cantonal and district prosecutor’s offices and local police structures. In a certain sense, we count that this dynamic will largely be met, but it is hard to say with what percentage.

Marija Taušan is a BIRN – Justice Report journalist. [email protected] Justice Report is BIRN’s weekly online publication.