An informal group of United States (U.S.) lawyers of Bosnian and Herzegovinian (BiH) origin has launched a process of collecting and analyzing archival documentation from cases of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
The aim of these activities is to assess the possibility of initiating a new international legal initiative related to the responsibility of the Republic of Serbia for the war and aggression against BiH.
Was everything considered?
The lawyers state that this initiative was launched on the occasion of the 30th anniversary of the Dayton Peace Agreement and that they believe the 2007 judgment of the ICJ, by which the Republic of Serbia was cleared of responsibility for genocide, was not based on a complete and unrestricted review of the documentation of state institutions of the Republic of Serbia, including materials that were submitted to the Hague Tribunal under a regime of limited access, with redactions and confidentiality measures.
According to the explanation from the initiative, in its 2007 judgment the ICJ applied the highest standard of proof, seeking fully convincing evidence of the attribution of genocidal intent to the Republic of Serbia, but the Court did not have access to unredacted minutes of the Supreme Defence Council nor to the complete documentation of the Yugoslav Army and Serbian security services, which the Republic of Serbia at the time provided to the Hague Tribunal under conditions that limited their use before the ICJ.
The lawyers point out that part of the material, including war notes and documents that were used in later judgments against Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, became available only after the conclusion of the proceedings before the ICJ and therefore was never considered in the context of the international responsibility of the Republic of Serbia.
According to information confirmed by the informal group of lawyers, in recent months a team of experts has contacted Naser Oric, the wartime commander of the defence of the Army of the Republic of BiH (ARBiH) in Srebrenica, requesting access to the complete evidentiary material from his cases before the Hague Tribunal, including transcripts, judgments, operational reports, and documents relating to command structures and logistical links between Belgrade and armed formations that operated on the territory of BiH.
Attacks on civilians
Within the initiative, documentation related to the phenomenon known as the “Sarajevo safari” is also being considered, documented in publicly available sources and testimonies indicating organized arrivals of foreign nationals from the territory of the Republic of Serbia for the purpose of shooting at civilians during the siege of Sarajevo.
According to available information, in the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and in structures connected with the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) there existed a system of logistical and operational support that enabled access to sniper positions in areas under the control of the VRS, which the lawyers consider relevant in the context of assessing the organized role of state structures of the Republic of Serbia in attacks on civilians, potentially supplementing the evidentiary picture of superiority, command, and support in the actions of armed formations on the territory of BiH.
Those behind the initiative state that the process has informal support from part of the U.S. legal and diplomatic expert community, but emphasize that this is not a project of the U.S. administration, rather an independent legal assessment in the phase of collecting documentation.
The lawyers stress that the next step is the preparation of a legal opinion based on the judgments of international courts, relevant conventions, and a comparative analysis of evidence that was not used or was not available to the ICJ in 2007, after which a decision will be made on the legal feasibility of the initiative to initiate international proceedings.
As stated by those behind the initiative, 30 years after the Dayton Peace Agreement the question of the international responsibility of the Republic of Serbia remains open, and access to unused Hague documentation represents a key element in its renewed consideration, Klix.ba writes.
