The idea being lobbied for by the Association of victims and witnesses of genocide in B&H and the Movement of Mothers of Srebrenica and Žepa Enclaves is that three departments of judges and the same number of prosecution departments are transferred to B&H to continue working on around 850 cases of war crimes handed over to the Prosecutor’s Office of B&H, following the termination of work of the Hague Tribunal in 2017.
“We request from the Security Council, the United Nations and the European Union to, in cooperation with domestic authorities, transfer a part of current structures of ICTY to B&H and to focus on 850 cases, which have already been before that court, in the coming five to seven years. In these cases dozens of names of potential war criminals are mentioned, whose names are mentioned in final verdicts of the ICTY and the domestic authorities have done nothing on processing them. Our request is not megalomaniac, especially since we have a pleiad of prosecutors of ICTY who know everything about the event in B&H and know about all the evidence. Hence, we request that a ‘Mini Hague’ is transferred to B&H,” presidents of the mentioned associations Murat Tahirović and Munira Subašić elaborated on their request addressed to the Chief Prosecutor of ICTY, believing there is no more time to wait for the enabling of the prosecution of B&H and that the prosecution of criminals in B&H and the region has stopped.
As a reminder, in 2008 the Council of Ministers of B&H adopted the Strategy for Prosecution of War Criminals in B&H, and the mentioned associations believed that the judicial bodies in B&H will “fairly, professionally and in an organized way” start processing war crimes. However, they were disappointed. Namely, they cannot believe that a central database for war crimes has not been established in B&H since 2005, that 850 cases which the ICTY worked on are not a priority in the work of the B&H judiciary, that they have been waiting for at least “one complex case” before the B&H judiciary for ten years now, and that the Government of Republika Srpska has organized a referendum “against the Court and Prosecutor’s Office of B&H since they are allegedly unprofessional”.
“Searching for culprit for the failure of the state Strategy for war crimes is like looking for a needle in a haystack and we believe that everyone, including the international community, bear the blame as well. Unfortunately, the ultimate heritage of the ICTY which is available to everyone and forwarded to the judicial bodies in B&H represents unused legal treasure,” Tahirović and Subašić believe.
Tahirović and Subašić hope that the “Mini Hague” will be set in B&H by the end of 2016. They have discussed this idea with Tanja Fajon, delegate in the European Parliament, and Ernest Petrič, until recently the president of the Constitutional Court of the Republic of Slovenia and the member of the commission of the United Nations that appoints the judges. The idea seemed interesting to them. It remains to be seen how interesting the idea is to the Chief Prosecutor of ICTY.
However, Subašić and Tahirović are making efforts to talk to the ambassadors of USA, France, United Kingdom, Russia and China to B&H soon in order to present them the idea about “Mini Hague” in B&H. This is important to them since these are member countries of the Security Council of the United Nations.
(Source: faktor.ba)
