War Crimes Lawyers Target Bosnian Defence Minister
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Lawyers for a former Bosnian Army soldier on trial for war crimes have filed a criminal complaint against the country’s defence minister for denying access to wartime military archives.
Defence lawyers for former soldier Nihad Bojadzic filed the complaint after they were prevented from gaining access to the Bosnian Army’s archives, which are under the jurisdiction of the defence ministry.
They hoped to find information in the wartime archives which would help their defence of Bojadzic, who is on trial in two separate cases for allegedly killing civilians in an attack on the Bosnian village of Trusina and beating, sexually abusing and raping prisoners in the town of Jablanica, both in 1993.
The lawyers received an access permit from the Bosnian court but the defence ministry rejected it, saying that the wartime archives contain confidential data.
The defence ministry told BIRN that, according to the Law on Protection of Confidential Data, the security ministry, not the state court, was responsible for issuing permits for access to such data following a security check.
“Therefore this is not about prohibiting the indictees’ defence from accessing the archives, but consistently applying legal norms,” a ministry spokesperson said.
According to the data protection legislation, only members of the Bosnian presidency, presidents and vice presidents of the country’s two political entities, judges, prosecutors and general attorneys can gain access to data at all levels of confidentiality without a security check.
But the lawyers defending Bojadzic, a former deputy commander of the Bosnian Army’s Zulfikar brigade, said the decision represented “a new rule”.
One of his lawyers, Vasvija Vidovic, said she had previously been able to access the military archives using permits issued by the defence ministry and the relevant courts.
If found guilty of denying access to the archives unlawfully, defence minister Zekerijah Osmic could face a prison sentence between six months and five years for the “failure to implement a decision rendered by the court of Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
