Following a request by BIRN BiH for more transparency in the justice system, the State Prosecution has started publishing redacted factual descriptions from confirmed indictments on its website.
The Bosnian state court has again rejected an indictment accusing wartime Serb official Milenko Stanic of committing crimes against humanity against Bosniak civilians in the Vlasenica area in 1992 and 1993.
In the summer of 1992, the bodies of 114 Bosniak and Croat civilians were found in two mass graves at a municipal dump and a cemetery in the town of Mostar, but decades on, no one has prosecuted for their murders.
A year after the identity of a protected witness in a Srebrenica genocide trial was publicly revealed by media in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska, putting his safety at risk, the Bosnian prosecution has not brought any charges.
The Dutch advisor to Bosnia’s High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, HJPC, says the proceedings conducted against the state court president and chief prosecutor highlight the system’s reluctance to impose serious penalties.
Years after the 1990s wars, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia have continued to slowly prosecute wartime crimes – but with increasing numbers of ageing suspects falling ill or dying, it’s likely that some cases will never see verdicts.
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.
There has been a further decline in the number of war crimes cases being completed and the number of new indictments has also fallen, said the OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The state court refused to confirm an indictment charging former brigade commander Radomir Nedic and former battalion commander Ratko Djurkovic with crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Ugljevik municipality in 1992.
A ceremony will be held in the village of Buhine Kuce, near Vitez in Bosnia and Herzegovina, to commemorate 26 people, including eight children, who were murdered in 1994 but whose killers have never faced trial.