With recent indictment for war crimes in Prijedor, the Prosecution of BiH reached a figure of 605 accused of war crimes, thus becoming a judicial institution with the biggest number of accused of war crimes in the world scale, since after a tribunal at Nuremberg and Tokyo after World War II, a bigger number of defendants in domestic or international tribunals has not been recorded.
Also, at the end of last year were adopted the prosecutorial decisions in all cases of Category 2, which were forwarded from the Prosecution of the Hague Tribunal to the Prosecution of BiH as the most complex cases.
From the Prosecution stated that the defendants, who have been indicted so far and whose trials are completed, were found guilty and sentenced to prison terms in about 80 % of cases, and they were prosecuted and convicted for war crimes against the victims of all nationalities and in all regions of our country.
They emphasize that the Special Department for War Crimes now has about 100 employees, the citizens of BiH from all over the country and of all nationalities, who work as prosecutors, investigators, legal associates and other professional staff.
Also, they noted that the Prosecution Office BiH was working with a modest budget resources in the past decade when it comes to the prosecution of international humanitarian law, and that their budgets are 10 or 20 times smaller than the resources of international tribunals.
They emphasized that the fight that war crimes do not remain unpunished is one of their primary missions, with which they are trying to strengthen the rule of law on the European path of BiH and to remove the mortgage of war crimes that are burdening relations in the country, by prosecuting only individuals responsible for the crimes.
From Prosecution added that they were intensively developing regional cooperation in efforts for processing war crimes, and that extremely good relations with partner prosecutors resulted in the prosecution of war crimes perpetrators in the region, and they thanked to colleagues in Belgrade, Zagreb and Podgorica on the cooperation that will certainly be continued with increased intensity in the future.
“It’s important for us that future generations in BiH, children and young people on whose lives war crimes left mark and consequences, no longer live in fear of war crimes perpetrators who are walking around freely, and that anyone who has committed a crime get the punishment they deserve and that there are no untouchables in this process,” as announced from the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH.
(Source: novovrijeme.ba)
