Serbia and Bosnia: Uniting for Justice

Serbian and Bosnian prosecutors are due to sign the deal, committing them to working together over prosecutions of those responsible for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, on January 31 in Brussels.

The protocol is intended to address the issue of parallel investigations in Bosnia and Serbia, enable the mutual transfer of evidence between the two countries and regulate trials of suspects in their own country for war crimes committed in the other.

International organisations which mediated in talks to hammer out the protocol say it will speed up war crime prosecutions which have been criticised for their slow progress, and reassure victims that justice will be done.

“The perception of injustice still prevails throughout the region,” said Romana Schweiger, head of the rule of law and human rights office at the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE, in Belgrade.

“The aim of the protocol is to bring more justice to war crimes victims and bring confidence among countries in the region,” she said.

But some Bosnian war crimes victims are suspicious that Serbian courts may not treat their cases fairly.

“We are worried because we know there have been some war crime cases in Serbia that ended with minimal convictions,” said Murat Tahirovic, president of the Bosnian organisation Victims and Witnesses of Genocide.

Hiding behind borders

International organisations have long been urging the two states to sign the protocol, saying it represents a crucial step towards better relations between Belgrade and Sarajevo over prosecutions for crimes committed during the 1990s conflict.

“This is a crucial element for the enhancement of regional cooperation in war crimes cases,” said Andy McGuffie, the EU delegation’s spokesperson in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Serge Brammertz, chief prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, said the protocol would “offer practical solutions for improving investigative capacity and strengthening the professional interaction between prosecutors’ offices”.

The ICTY is set to close after finishing its work by the end of 2014, leaving all future trials in the hands of national courts.

The protocol will make this easier, the OSCE’s Schweiger said.

“Given the regional aspect of the crimes, this task cannot be handled by one national court alone,” she said.

Officials in both countries are also optimistic about the protocol, although they have declined to discuss all of its details.

“The only way forward is to cooperate with our neighbours. This way we will speed up prosecutions and put an end to this entire period once and for all,” said Bosnian justice minister Barisa Colak.

“There is no other way to solve this issue, because there is no extradition in war crimes cases in the region,” he added.

Serbia’s deputy prosecutor for war crimes, Bruno Vekaric, said that cooperation between prosecutors was the only way to try those who have so far managed to evade justice.

“Due to the complexity of war crimes which are usually committed in one country, then victims are in the other countries, this protocol is the only way to overcome this obstacle as the perpetrators are usually hiding behind the borders of the country they committed a crime,” Vekaric said.

Colak said that the protocol contains a clause stating that before a case is transferred from Bosnia and Serbia, there must be consultations with the representatives of victims who will be able to veto the process.

A second-class prosecution?

The prosecutors’ promises haven’t managed to convince victims’ support groups in Bosnia, however.

Tahirovic expressed doubts that victims would always be consulted and said that the protocol could put the Bosnian prosecution in an inferior position to its Serbian counterpart.

“We become just an outpost for the Serbian judiciary and all we do is send along evidence and cases,” he said

He said there was no reason to accept Serbia’s “self-proclaimed w