INFORMATION ON RESOLVING WAR CRIMES CASES

INFORMATION FOR THE PUBLIC

 

Period 1 January 2023 – 31 December 2023

 

 

KTRZ - Specific criminal offence and perpetrator - war crime

Indictments filed: 17 indictments against 70 persons

Cessation of investigation: 13 cases against 112 persons

Failure to conduct investigation: 13 cases against 390 persons

Transferred to another prosecutor’s office for prosecution: 7 cases, 15 persons

Total number of resolved KTRZ cases at the end of the reporting period: 60 cases, 763 persons

Unresolved KTRZ cases at the end of the reporting period: 247 cases, 2658 persons

 

KTARZ – Unspecified criminal offence or perpetrator - war crime; resolved in total: 361 cases

Failure to conduct investigation: 177 cases

Resolved in another way: 152 cases

Transferred into a KTRZ case: 5 cases

Transferred to another prosecutor’s office: 27 cases

Unresolved at the end of the reporting period: 1038 cases

 

KTNRZ – Specific criminal offence with unknown perpetrator - war crime; resolved in total: 93 cases

Failure to conduct investigations: 10 case

Cessation of investigations: 3 cases

Resolved in another way: 20 cases

Transferred into a KTRZ case: 2 cases

Transferred to another prosecutor’s office: 58 cases

Unresolved at the end of the reporting period: 244 cases

 

Cases resolved through regional cooperation in the reporting period:

A total of 6 cases were transferred to another judiciary, of which 1 KTRZ case to the competent authorities in the Republic of Serbia in the investigation phase and 5 cases to the competent authorities in the Republic of Croatia, namely two KTRZ cases in the indictment phase, two KTRZ cases in the investigation phase and one KTRZ case in the criminal complaint phase.

 

338 persons in 113 KTRZ cases are still inaccessible, of which 40 persons are persons with the designation ‘A’.

 

Total number of unresolved cases in the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina /PO BiH/ involving ‘A’ designation persons: 129 persons in 51 KTRZ cases. The PO BiH completed the cases involving a total of 682 designation ‘A’ persons in various ways. Of this number, 337 persons were transferred to other prosecutor’s offices.

 

The achievement of strategic goal VII of the Revised National War Crimes Processing Strategy (hereinafter: Revised National Strategy), which refers to regional cooperation in the reporting period, is primarily reflected in the meetings of case prosecutors from the PO BiH with prosecutors from the region, all with the aim of acting in certain war crimes cases. The Regional Conference of Prosecutors on Cooperation and Prosecution of War Crimes was held in September 2023. A number of conclusions were reached at it with the aim of improving the handling of cases involving inaccessible persons, search for missing persons, issues related to protected witnesses, transparency of the judiciary, etc. In the course of 2023, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Residual Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (hereinafter: IRMCT OTP) was continuously informed about important issues of regional cooperation. The PO BiH informs the IRMCT OTP about mutual legal assistance requests sent and requests sent to the countries of the region based on concluded protocols, but which have not yet been acted upon. The PO BiH submits to the IRMCT OTP data on its operation and a number of other information twice a year to allow it to compile a semi-annual report to the UN Security Council. The IRMCT OTP assisted in the processing of the PO BiH Department I priority cases, which were designated as priority cases to work on in 2023 by a binding instruction of the Chief Prosecutor of the PO BiH, all with the aim of processing complex cases in accordance with the provisions of the Revised National Strategy. The IRMCT OTP significantly supports work activities in war crimes cases in which the persons concerned are inaccessible to the prosecuting authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and are located in the countries of the region. Namely, IRMCT representatives offered to contribute to better results in work on priority KTRZ cases in 2023 through the joint operation of the two offices, the IRMCT and the PO BiH. In July and September 2023, a series of meetings of all case prosecutors of the PO BiH Special Department for War Crimes and several representatives of the IRMCT OTP were held in order to determine work on priority war crimes cases for 2023.

 

Significant support in the work of the PO BiH Special Department for War Crimes was provided through the engagement of an international legal advisor in the PO BiH Special Department for War Crimes. The PO BiH Chief Prosecutor supported the decision of the IRMCT prosecutor, Mr Serge Brammertz, who had proposed Mr Douglas Stringer as an advisor in the PO BiH. Mr Douglas Stringer, an international expert, a former senior representative of the Tribunal and prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (hereinafter: ICTY) and the IRMCT occasionally stayed at the PO BiH from February 2023. The international expert was engaged in providing support to the PO BiH Special Department for War Crimes and reviewing the state and improvement of the organisation of work in Department I, all keeping in mind the deadlines for completing work on war crimes cases set by the Revised National Strategy. In addition, Mr Stringer directly assisted the PO BiH in the identification and access to the evidence in the IRMCT OTP in order to further speed up the work on investigations and prosecution of war crimes.

 

A conference of the chief prosecutors of Bosnia and Herzegovina took place in July 2023 when they discussed about the systemic aspects of the prosecution of war crimes and the achievement of the strategic goals set in the Revised National Strategy and the associated annexes. In addition to the Regional Conference held in September 2023, which was attended by representatives of all prosecutor’s offices from the region, a meeting of representatives of the Public Prosecutor’s Office for War Crimes of the Republic of Serbia, representatives of the IRMCT OTP and the PO BiH was held in The Hague in December 2023 and it discussed issues regarding the variation of witness protective measures and the assistance of the IRMCT OTP for this purpose, so that the IRMCT would accept applications to this effect. Furthermore, there was discussion about the cases in which the persons involved are registered as inaccessible ones as they are located in the countries of the region, as well as about the use of the EDS and the JDB databases when dealing with war crimes cases.

 

The activities undertaken in the priority cases set for 2023 significantly contributed to the implementation of Strategic Objectives I and IV of the Revised National Strategy, especially in terms of achieving the goal of exhausting all procedural and legal options in complex priority cases directed towards the comprehensive identification of a criminal event and the filing of an indictment.

 

For the purpose of acting in accordance with the strategic measure of providing protection and support to victims and witnesses as set out in the Revised National Strategy, representatives of the PO BiH and the Public Prosecutor’s Office for War Crimes of the Republic of Serbia held meetings in the reporting period to discuss the cases where support was needed for witnesses, injured parties and victims to ensure their participation in criminal proceedings in war crimes cases.

 

The PO BiH made available and allowed all prosecutors in Bosnia and Herzegovina to review and access the data of the comprehensive Centralised Database of War Crimes, and it promptly acted on all sent requests, in which way it implemented Strategic Goal II of the Revised National Strategy.

 

In order to implement Strategic Goal III, a review of the complexity of all KTRZ cases was carried out in the PO BiH Special Department for War Crimes in February 2023 with the aim of priority processing of more complex war crimes cases, all in accordance with the provisions of the Revised National Strategy. In the course of 2023, all KTRZ cases were being continuously updated on a semi-annual basis. In December 2023, all the necessary data for KTARZ and KTNRZ cases were collected in order to facilitate the monitoring of the work on the aforementioned cases. In early January 2024, the PO BiH informed the Standing Committee for the Efficiency and Quality of Prosecutor’s Offices of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereinafter: Standing Committee of the HJPC BiH) about all open KTRZ, KTARZ and KTNRZ cases and the details of proceedings in the course of 2023 through the submission of previously defined schedules of the requested data.

 

The Chief Prosecutor and the Head of the PO BiH War Crimes Department regularly overviewed the implementation of the provisions of the Revised National Strategy and, as necessary, reported on the work on war crimes cases to the Supervisory Body for Monitoring the Implementation of the Revised National Strategy and the Standing Committee of the HJPC BiH.

 

In accordance with its obligations assumed from the Revised National Strategy and Annex B, the PO BiH carried out necessary checks and prepared summary updated information on the cases in which persons with the designation ‘A’ as assigned to them by the ICTY prosecutor (the ‘standard designation ‘A’ – sufficient evidence’) were recorded. In accordance with the conclusions of the HJPC BiH, the PO BiH regularly submits to the Standing Committee of the HJPC BiH information on cases in which persons with the designation ‘A’ are registered.

 

Below are the schedules with the statuses of designation ‘A’ persons in the entity prosecutor’s offices and the Prosecutor’s Office of the Brčko District of BiH and the PO BiH, as of December 2023.

 

 

You can view the schedules at the following LINK.