OSCE is absolutely right: Even prosecutors admit we have chaos with war crimes investigations!

Written by: Amina Čorbo-Zećo

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The judiciary in Bosnia and Herzegovina is experiencing the greatest and deepest crisis in its post-war history, analysts and legal experts agree.
The public demands efficiency and results from the work of the Prosecutor's Office of BiH, the Court of BiH, and the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of BiH, but when you attend just one hearing, for example in a war crimes case, you understand why the judiciary is in crisis.

Thus, today in the Čemerno case, Judge Halil Lagumdžija warned prosecutor Vladimir Simović (after several witnesses established that they had given earlier statements on those circumstances) that his investigators, as well as police officers, should ask witnesses during the investigation whether they have been questioned before, because major problems arise when such a fact is only established at the hearing, when the defense is, at the very least, deprived of effective defense.

„You don't know what chaos there is with the investigations and those interrogations. I also don't know that some witnesses were questioned earlier. Well, you also know about the lack of coordination with SIPA,“ Simović said.
Lagumdžija then clearly stated that Simović should tell the chief prosecutor (Gordana Tadić, editor's note) that this chaos must be resolved and a unified system created, so that „by pressing one button“ everything about a witness would be known.

It is clear, when all this is seen, why we do not have more indictments for war crimes and why there is constant talk about the slowness of the judiciary. Chief Prosecutor Gordana Tadić advocates a new strategy for prosecuting crimes. This is definitely a mockery of justice. She has never explained to the OSCE where nearly 848 cases from The Hague ended up. It is increasingly clear that some prosecutors and judges here want revisionism and the defense of great-state crimes, and that this is the new strategy they advocate.

One of the key questions is also the issue of as many as 48 fugitives in Serbia or Croatia, indicted or convicted by the judiciary of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our judicial leaders last year publicly boasted about regional cooperation regarding war crimes.

This latest case at the Court of BiH also shows that the OSCE Mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina absolutely published a truthful thematic report „Management of War Crimes Cases in Proceedings before the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina“. The work of the Prosecutor's Office of BiH was assessed negatively in this report.

Based on the analysis of specific cases, the OSCE also notes a decline in the quality of investigations and prosecution of war crimes cases.

Many legal experts warn that in recent years there has also been an attempt at ethnic balance in the prosecution of war crimes before the Bosnian-Herzegovinian judiciary. In its reports, the OSCE detects similar cases as a problem in the prosecution of war crimes from the 1990s, citing poor investigations by the BiH judiciary regarding war crimes and the deliberate steering towards a false trail.