Džana Brkanić, Author at Detektor

The prosecution has asked the Bosnian state presidency for more money to exhume war graves after only receiving 95,000 euros from the Council of Ministers for 2017. The Bosnian state prosecutor’s office told BIRN that 190,000 KM (95,000 euros) in funding had been approved by the Council of Ministers for exhumations in 2017, but more money has been requested from the state presidency.

Dragan Vikic, the wartime commander of Bosnian interior ministry special police units, was charged alongside three other ex-officers with killing eight Yugoslav People’s Army prisoners of war in 1992. The state prosecution on Thursday charged the four former police officers with war crimes, alleging they were responsible for the murders of eight Yugoslav People’s Army soldiers who were captured after their military vehicle broke down in Sarajevo in April 1992.

Legal experts said that all allegations by war crimes witnesses who claimed investigators put pressure on them to incriminate suspects must be properly probed and new measures put in place to prevent threats.

The State Investigation and Protection Agency arrested ten former Croatian Defence Council fighters and jail guards suspected of suspicion of crimes against humanity in the Orasje area.

Swiss police have arrested Elfeta Veseli, a female former Bosnian Army soldier who is suspected of murdering a 12-year-old Serb boy in the Zvornik area in 1992. The Bosnian state prosecution said on Thursday that 56-year-old former Bosnian Army member Elfeta Veseli has been arrested in the Neuchatel canton in western Switzerland and that extradition proceedings will begin soon.

Only three verdicts in state-level war crimes cases in Bosnia and Herzegovina have ever ordered compensation payments to victims of sexual violence, but none of the victims has received any money yet.

Six former Bosnian Serb soldiers and military policemen were arrested on suspicion that they committed crimes against humanity against over 60 Bosniaks, including children, in the Milici municipality in 1992. The State Investigation and Protection Agency on Tuesday arrested Branko Jolovic, Milomir Milosevic, Nenad Vukotic, Nikola Losic, Dejan Milanovic and Radomir Pantic, all former soldiers or military policemen with the Bosnian Serb Army, on suspicion that they committed war crimes in the village of Zaklopaca in the Milici municipality in May 1992.

Bosnian courts have allowed five war crimes convicts to avoid serving their prison sentences by paying a fine, BIRN has found - a practice which critics claim makes a mockery of justice.

Hundreds of local residents paid their respects in Kozarac near Prijedor as the remains of eight people killed by Bosnian Serb forces during wartime were laid to rest over 20 years after they died.