Tegeltija admits that the judiciary prosecutes Bosniaks and Croats!

By: Amina Čorbo-Zećo

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"SDA wants to regain influence over the work of the judiciary of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and one of the reasons is that more people have been indicted for crimes against Serbs in three years than in the previous 11 years," stated the President of the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of BiH, Milan Tegeltija. With this statement, Tegeltija finally admitted that in the BiH Prosecutor's Office, albeit under a different policy now, indictments are being forcibly filed and fabricated.
Verdicts are proof of this. It is interesting that Tegeltija did not mention how many verdicts have been delivered...

It is unbelievable that the president of the HJPC would so openly state that "this is precisely one of the reasons why we are still suffering attacks from SDA, which, in an attempt to regain control over judicial institutions, is seeking reform of the HJPC."

He stated that indictments have been filed against 102 people for cases where Serbs were victims, while from 2015 to date, 41 indictments have been filed against 126 people.

Tegeltija claims that "until a few years ago, the judiciary at the BiH level was largely under the control of SDA, which was tacitly supported in this by certain international factors due to specific political interests."

Perhaps it was, but now it is under the control of SNSD, HDZ, and other parties, so it is clear why we need judicial reform. Not only do we need it, but it is urgently needed. We are collapsing headlong on a path where there is no justice. The rule of law forms the foundation of the state, so it is clear why the deniers and opponents of our state are burying this significant characteristic of a normal democratic society.

Mr. Tegeltija, let everyone answer for their crimes, but forced accusations bring no good to anyone. Least of all to the judiciary, as all reports from independent monitoring bodies clearly indicate.

If I may use jargon, to quote Denis Zvizdić, this is how it looks - you have three stages of a race, the first stage is the most important, and we now want to start running the third stage, skipping the first.

A very precise question arises - what about the more than 800 cases from 'Category A' from The Hague?
The BiH Prosecutor's Office has not yet completed its work on war crimes cases from 'Category A', meaning it has not completed its work on those cases where investigations were initiated and conducted by the Hague Tribunal and were transferred to the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Experts explain that the plan was to resolve these cases, and then transfer some prosecutors to other departments of the Prosecutor's Office.

The Chief Prosecutor of the BiH Prosecutor's Office, Gordana Tadić, claims the opposite: "Category A cases are all cases that were in the BiH Prosecutor's Office and now have different designations in accordance with the 'Strategy for Working on War Crimes Cases', and they have mostly been completed," Tadić stated in response to questions from Patria journalists. However, sources from the BiH Prosecutor's Office reveal that Prosecutor Tadić considers cases assigned to prosecutors as "resolved cases"!

"If all these cases are completed, how is it possible that the case from Nova Kasaba, where about 30 people were shot, has not received a final judicial epilogue. A surviving witness to this event testified several times in The Hague and

The BiH Prosecutor's Office, the BiH Prosecutor's Office possesses data about this witness, but the perpetrators and masterminds of this crime have never been prosecuted."

"The case from elementary school Vuk Karadžić in Bratunac, where 300 people were killed in two days, also does not have a judicial epilogue. Witnesses know the perpetrators and masterminds of these murders, while the BiH Prosecutor's Office continues to take no concrete steps to bring the criminals to justice."

"In the Liplje camp (Zvornik), 56 people were shot, mostly women and children. A witness to this event in another case before the BiH Court spoke about this event, but was warned by the Court panel and the acting prosecutor that it was a different case and that they would deal with it later. That later has not yet come."

"The Bijeli Potok case, also in Zvornik, has not been resolved either. Around 700 people were killed, half of them were found in a mass grave in Snagovo in JNA bags, and the rest are still being searched for. The BiH Prosecutor's Office has not yet made a final decision regarding this case."
These are just some of the cases that were returned from The Hague to the BiH Prosecutor's Office, and which have not yet received a judicial epilogue in Bosnia and Herzegovina.