19. May 2020.
More than ten streets, squares, parks and public buildings in Bosnia and Herzegovina have been dedicated to war crime convicts and defendants like Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, research by BIRN has found.
City: Bijeljina
12. March 2020.
Courts in Trebinje and Bijeljina in Bosnia and Herzegovina have rejected pleas to ban Serb nationalist Chetnik associations for allegedly inciting ethnic hatred and intolerance.
The Basic Courts in Trebinje and Bijeljina told BIRN that they have turned down requests to ban associations whose names contain the words ‘Chetnik Movement’ or ‘Ravna Gora Movement’.
The plea was “rejected as unfounded”, said Jelica Ijacic, the secretary at Trebinje Basic Court.
The Sarajevo Canton justice ministry sent requests last year to courts in the towns of Banja Luka, Doboj, Bijeljina, Sokolac and Trebinje to ban the Chetnik associations on the grounds that they provoke ethnic, racial or religious hatred and discord and intolerance.
The plea for a ban was submitted following a controversial commemoration in Visegrad in March 2019 of Dragoljub ‘Draza’ Mihailovic, the WWII leader of the Serb nationalist Chetnik movement.
The courts in Doboj and Sokolac have also rejected the request, BIRN was told in January, while the Banja Luka court has not yet made a decision.
After the Mihailovic commemoration, the Bosnian state prosecution opened a case to examine whether the incident had provoked hatred and intolerance. The probe is still ongoing.
This year’s Chetnik event to celebrate Mihailovic, which had been scheduled for Friday this week, has been postponed because the authorities in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity imposed measures to ban public gatherings as part of attempts to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
The president of the Republika Srpska Ravna Gora Movement, Dusan Sladojevic, insisted that the organisation did not promote hatred or intolerance.
“We have the honourable idea of correcting inaccurate history and seeing how to proceed through the catharsis of truth,” Sladojevic told BIRN.
He also insisted that “uncle Draza’s army was never criminal”.
Chetnik leader Mihailovic was sentenced to death in 1946 for high treason and collaboration with Nazi Germany, but rehabilitated in 2015 by a Belgrade court. During WWII, his forces committed large-scale war crimes, including crimes against Bosniaks in Visegrad.
There was controversy on Orthodox Christmas Eve in January when the Ravna Gora Association in Visegrad organised a convoy of cars that drove noisily through the town, blaring Serbian songs, sparking fear among Bosniaks who fled during the war but have since returned.
The state prosecution opened a case to probe the incident and similar Serb celebrations in Srebrenica and Bratunac the same evening.
16. January 2020.
The murder 20 years ago of notorious paramilitary chief Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan, meant he never stood trial for war crimes - and two decades later, only one member of his much-feared Tigers unit has ever been prosecuted.
9. August 2017.
The number of people arriving illegally in Bosnia has grown this year as desperate migrants seek new ways to reach EU states after other countries on the ‘Balkan Route’ closed their borders.
24. February 2017.
At the trial of ten former policemen for wartime crimes in the town of Janja, a prosecution witness said that his father up was beaten up by the police in November 1993, and later died.
2. February 2017.
Former Bosnian Serb Army serviceman Brane Planojevic went on trial for the murder and torture of civilians and prisoners of war at a detention facility in Rogatica from 1992 to 1995. The trial of Brane Planojevic opened on Thursday at the state court in Sarajevo with the reading of the indictment charging the ex-soldier with murdering, torturing and assisting in the rape of prisoners held at a detention centre at the Rasadnik farm in Rogatica.
17. October 2016.
Disciplinary proceedings were launched against state prosecutor Miroslav Janjic because he failed to include five people’s deaths in a war crimes indictment, not because he indicted a Bosniak commander, prosecutors insisted.
8. July 2016.
Former Bosnian Serb policemen Goran Vujovic, Miroslav Duka and Zeljko Ilic were sentenced to a total of 23 years in prison for crimes against humanity in Bileca in 1992. The Bosnian state court found Vujovic, Duka and Ilic guilty on Friday of taking part in the abuse and torture of Bosniak and Croat civilians at the police station in Bileca and in a student dormitory in the southern town.
19. May 2016.
Witnesses told the trial of former Croatian Defence Council fighter Almaz Nezirovic, accused of abusing prisoners in Derventa and Bosanski Brod, that the defendant beat them with a rubber baton.
4. March 2016.
The district court of Bijeljina has acquitted Milomir Vasic of charges of war crimes in the Bratunac area.
Sva prava zadržana BIRN BiH.