BIRN Launches Interactive War Crimes Verdict Map
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BIRN on Thursday published its War Crimes Verdicts Map, an interactive tool intended to provide an overview of court rulings on the crimes that were committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
Comprising a total of 386 verdicts collected to date by BIRN, it represents a unique database of final judgements issued by national courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Montenegro, Kosovo and Serbia.
It also includes verdicts handed down by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague, and cases in which the defendants died during their trials at the ICTY.
“While reporting on war crimes, we as journalists often struggled to get all the documents related to the war crimes cases we have been following. Through the years, we accumulated a significant archive and then also collected verdicts from the various courts,” said the map project’s team leader, Marija Ristic.
“Bearing in mind how closed to the public our courts still are, we believe this map will be a unique resource for journalists, students, researchers and the general public,” she added.
The map however does not include verdicts handed down by cantonal courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the district court in Brcko and the Republika Srpska court due to the large number of cases and their complex process of anonymization.
“In some of the countries, BIRN is still waiting for courts to provide all the verdicts. Bosnia and Herzegovina is the most complex, so we will continue working on the verdicts from the local courts in the coming years,” Ristic explained.
According to the map data, so far at least 646 people have been convicted by local courts and 83 more by the ICTY for crimes committed during almost a decade of conflict in the former Yugoslavia which left some 125,000 people dead and 12,000 still missing.
“It’s important is to also note that the map reveals the huge scale of the crimes committed during the conflicts,” Ristic said.
Besides the verdicts, the ‘Resources’ section includes indictments and other case records. The map also includes links to BIRN court reports and analysis dedicated to war crimes trials over the last ten years.
The map will be periodically updated.
The total number of missing persons was provided by the International Commission on Missing Persons.
The War Crimes Verdicts Map is part of BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice initiative funded by the European Commission, the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs of Switzerland and the Robert Bosch Stiftung.
The project aims to improve the general public’s understanding of transitional justice issues in former Yugoslav countries – Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia.
