Silent capitulation of BiH prosecutors: Brammertz seeks justice that the BiH Prosecutor's Office does not want!

By Amina Čorbo-Zećo

The BiH Prosecutor's Office is not celebrating success these days, but covering up impotence. After the Mechanism's Chief Prosecutor Serge Brammertz from The Hague announced that he had submitted an investigative file on "particularly notorious crimes against humanity" to domestic institutions, the BiH Prosecutor's Office responded with only one sentence: "A joint team has been formed."

Silently. Without details. Without will. Without strategy. The media almost superficially reported this news. Just as the Prosecutor's Office tried to hide this fact. If it weren't for that, we wouldn't have had to hear it from Brammertz; the BiH Prosecutor's Office would have announced it itself.

Prosecutor Ivan Matešić did, admittedly, make an effort to emphasize that it was "at their initiative." But it is clear to anyone who even superficially follows the work of the Prosecutor's Office that such news does not reflect any institutional progress, but, on the contrary, confirms institutional defeat.

While Brammertz acts as a prosecutor advocating for truth before the UN Security Council, the domestic Prosecutor's Office acts as a passive contractor under full supervision. Not a partner in justice, but an administrative service for international initiatives.

Instead of showing initiative and moral determination by now, the BiH Prosecutor's Office has offered us indictments under political pressure, which often lacked the crime itself, but left the message that truth is flexible. That is why we do not have a single indictment for the siege of Sarajevo. Nor for the siege of Goražde. There is also no publicly available list of "A" cases that The Hague provided long ago. We have had chief prosecutors who talked but did not work, or who worked on revisionism by prosecuting members of the Army of RBiH and the Ministry of Internal Affairs of RBiH.

Now, with Milanko Kajganić at the helm (who co-signed the indictment in the Dobrovoljačka case), and Ivan Matešić as the head of the War Crimes Department, it seems the Prosecutor's Office formally confirms its subordination. They cannot. They must not. Or, most dangerously, they do not want to.

Statistics and practice show that this was never their goal.

Therefore, this is not a success of justice, but a clear indicator of its end. The question is not whether indictments will come, but whether anyone will believe anymore that they are coming from the right place.

Because a state that does not try criminals as it should is no longer a state. It is a space under supervision and under silence, where, increasingly often, those who defended are tried, not those who attacked.

Therefore, although there is a "joint team" on paper, the reality is simple: Brammertz came for justice because he knows no one here is looking for it anymore.