The issue of registering the judgments of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IMRCT) from The Hague has recently been brought up again, and according to the expectations of the Victims’ Association, it should result in the entry of Hague convicts into the criminal records in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) sometime this year.
This is an issue that has been causing suspicion in the public for years, and it further traumatizes the victims, since war crimes convicts after serving their sentences have the opportunity to apply/candidate for whatever position they want and hold public functions in BiH without any hindrance, i.e. without any legal consequences. participate in social life.
Victims’ representatives, local and foreign officials, as well as the main Hague prosecutors, such as Serge Brammertz, who is doing so through a report to the United Nations (UN) Security Council, have been warning about the fact that BiH has not yet registered the judgments of the said courts and the delay in that process for years.
The Ministry of Justice of BiH mentioned that BiH Minister of Justice Davor Bunoza recently met with the President of the IMRCT, Graciela Gatti Santana and that the most important topic of the conversation was precisely obtaining data from final convictions issued by the Hague Tribunal and the IMRCT, in order to record this data in the criminal records in BiH.
Furthermore, they state that the Ministry of Justice prepared a proposal for a memorandum of cooperation between the Ministry of Justice of BiH and the IMRCT, which was submitted to the IMRCT for approval or providing possible remarks or suggestions that would improve the proposed solutions, and that, at the proposal of the IMRCT, contact points of the two institutions were established in order to speed up the process of signing the memorandum.
Victims’ associations, however, warn that this is an issue that has been open for years, and they believe that the competent institutions of BiH have had enough time to resolve it.
In this regard, the president of the Association of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide, Murat Tahirovic, said that this “saga” has been going on since 2016 and that it is continuously followed by excuses.
“It is clear that legal acts are defined within one state and you cannot define that at the municipal level. Of course, you have to regulate that rule at the state level and then ‘lower’ it to lower levels as certain procedures require,” Tahirovic explained.
“The essence is to ensure that all citizens of BiH are equal before the law,” notes Tahirovic, underlining that these are convicts for the most serious crimes and that, accordingly, they must be included in criminal records.
He stated that the struggle to find suitable solutions is taking too long, but also that, unfortunately, there has been a lack of adequate involvement of the competent authorities so far.
E.Dz.
