The case regarding the sniper activity of Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) members in the Nedzarici neighborhood during the aggression against Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), initiated in 2021 after the release of a video that caused numerous reactions, has been transferred to the jurisdiction of the Cantonal Prosecutor’s Office of Canton Sarajevo (CS).
The CS Cantonal Prosecutor’s Office confirmed that the case has been assigned to a prosecutor after being handed over in April from the BiH Prosecutor’s Office.
The State Prosecutor’s Office also confirmed that the case was transferred to the CS Cantonal Prosecutor’s Office by a decision of the Court of BiH.
“In the Special Department for War Crimes, cases related to the suffering of civilians in Sarajevo from sniper activity are being processed,” the BiH Prosecutor’s Office said.
More than three years have passed since the BiH Prosecutor’s Office announced it would examine the circumstances and roles of individuals shown in the wartime sniper footage from Sarajevo, which was published by the media.
In May 2021, a French journalist released a video recorded during the war showing a soldier talking and shooting at civilians in Sarajevo.
After the release of the footage, the company “Telemach” announced that they had identified one of their employees in the video, whom they suspended, and they requested information from the BiH Prosecutor’s Office and the CS Cantonal Prosecutor’s Office on whether an investigation into war crimes was being conducted against him.
Previously, the Prosecutor’s Office emphasized that they expected the case to be transferred in accordance with the State Strategy for Work on War Crimes Cases.
Another Day of Remembrance for the Murdered Children of Sarajevo, for whose deaths none of the direct perpetrators has been held accountable, was marked yesterday.
Through verdicts in The Hague, for the campaign of terror against civilians, sniper and artillery attacks, the former political and military leaders of RS – Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic – as well as the former commander of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps of the VRS, Stanislav Galic, were sentenced to life imprisonment. The former commander of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps, Dragomir Milosevic, was sentenced to 29 years in prison for terrorizing civilians in Sarajevo.
Furthermore, earlier research showed that, although the Hague database contains numerous reports and orders, as well as expert military analyses identifying the origin of a particular shell, aerial bomb, or from which territory a sniper operated – all of which were used in the cases against Dragomir Milosevic, Stanislav Galic, and Radovan Karadzic – prosecutors in the region, even 26 years after the end of the war, have not used this evidence as grounds for prosecution based on command or individual responsibility.
Hague verdicts state that sniper activity was widespread throughout the city and that civilians were deliberately targeted with “sniper rifles,” which caused the killing and wounding of numerous Sarajevo residents, Detektor writes.
