Legal changes banning the denial of genocide, imposed by Bosnia and Herzegovina’s top international official, caused the Bosnian Serb leadership to threaten to pull out of the country’s tax system, judiciary and army.
The disappearance of Bosnian Serb Army general Milomir Savcic, who is on trial for assisting the Srebrenica genocide, is the latest in a series of incidents in which war crimes suspects and convicts have escaped justice in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Bosnian war survivors want former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic to be found guilty this week of genocide in five Bosnian municipalities in 1992 as well as genocide in Srebrenica in 1995, but experts believe this is unlikely to happen.
On the anniversary of the Bosnian Serb Army’s shelling of the city of Tuzla, which left 71 dead in May 1995, parents of children who were killed praised the Kapija Memorial Centre for safeguarding the truth about the attack.
War crime cases involving a large number of defendants have been on hold for more than a year because of measures imposed to prevent large gatherings spreading the coronavirus, raising concerns that justice is suffering as a result.
Relatives of a group of victims of the Srebrenica genocide whose lives were not saved by Dutch peacekeeping troops in 1995 can file claims for compensation from the Netherlands starting in March, Dutch ministers said.
The Serbian authorities have paid compensation for the detention and legal costs of former policeman Ilija Jurisic, who was cleared of ordering an attack on a retreating Yugoslav People’s Army convoy in Tuzla in Bosnia in 1992.
The nine men were detained on suspicion of involvement in the killings of 44 Bosniak civilians in a village in the Sokolac municipality during the Bosnian war in September 1992.
Relatives and friends of 43 people including three children who were killed in the shelling of Sarajevo’s Markale marketplace by Bosnian Serb forces in August 1995 gathered to commemorate the anniversary.