Bosnia Prosecution Claims War Crimes Success
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In a statement on Monday to mark ten years of prosecuting war crimes, the prosecution said it has raised indictments against 453 people since it started work, and more than 80 per cent of its cases so far have ended in convictions.
“The dedication to prosecuting war crimes has reached its peak in 2013 and 2014, as in these past two years we charged 168 people,” the prosecution said.
Spokesperson Boris Grubesic said the prosecutor’s office has also intensified work on the search for the remaining 8,000 people missing from the war – by asking the Bosnian armed forces to get involved – and increased the level of cooperation in war crimes cases with neighbouring countries.
“This cooperation has already yielded results, which is demonstrated by our results in complex cases, such as the Strpci one and others,” said the Bosnian prosecution.
Fifteen people were arrested in December in a joint operation between the Bosnian and Serbian prosecutions, on suspicion they took part in the abduction and killing of 20 passengers from a train in Strpci in 1992.
But Bosniak and Serb victims associations’ questioned the prosecution’s claims of success.
Murat Tahirovic, the president of the Association of Witnesses and Victims of Genocide, said that over the past decade the Bosnian prosecution had failed to indict higher-level officials.
“We have mostly seen indictments against direct perpetrators but not organisers and planners,” Tahirovic told BIRN.
He added that the prosecution has failed to implement the state strategy for prosecuting war crimes cases, which was adopted in 2008 and states that the most sensitive and complex cases should have been finished by the end of this year.
“This will certainly not be done,” said Tahirovic.
Nedeljko Mitrovic, president of the organisation of Families of the Captured, Killed Fighters and Missing Civilians of Republika Srpska, said that the prosecution had failed to bring justice to the Serb victims of the conflict.
“We have sent more than 50 criminal reports on various crimes, and for the most part, we never even got a reply or an explanation,” Mitrovic told BIRN.
