Prosecutor's Office of BiH Expects Several Extraditions from the US and France

The Prosecutor's Office of BiH has indicted 635 persons for war crimes and serious violations of international humanitarian law to date, and it is the institution with the highest number of prosecuted individuals, even on a global scale, the Prosecutor's Office of BiH announced.

The Chief Prosecutor of the Prosecutor's Office of BiH, Goran Salihović, together with officials of the Special Department for War Crimes, is participating in a regional conference on the processing of war crimes cases, held on the Brijuni Islands, Croatia.

The conference on the Brijuni Islands is attended by chief prosecutors and representatives of prosecutor's offices from Croatia, BiH, Montenegro, as well as the Chief Prosecutor of the ICTY, Serge Brammertz, and the U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues, H.E. Todd F. Buchwald, with his team.

The Chief Prosecutor is moderating a session concerning the cooperation of regional prosecutor's offices to date, an analysis of results, as well as modalities for improving cooperation.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is most interested in regional cooperation, given that the largest number of war crimes cases committed in BiH are involved, and therefore insists on the constant strengthening and development of regional cooperation - this is the position of the delegation of the Prosecutor's Office of BiH.

- The delegation from Bosnia and Herzegovina is proud of the fact that the Prosecutor's Office of BiH has indicted 635 persons for war crimes and serious violations of international humanitarian law in 12 years of work, which is certainly a significant result, viewed in local, regional, and even global frameworks, as the number of indicted persons is the largest in the world since the Nuremberg trials.

Of that number, in the past 3 and a half years, 350 persons have been indicted, which represents more than half of the total number of indicted persons.

Also, the percentage of convictions in war crimes cases is over 80%, and so far more than 2,100 years of final prison sentences have been imposed, which speaks to the exceptional quality of the prosecutors' work.

In its work on war crimes cases, the Prosecutor's Office of BiH highlights the efforts invested in the process of searching for missing persons, as an essential segment of these cases from the standpoint of justice and humanity, where international cooperation is also needed.

The Prosecutor's Office is also making intensive efforts to locate, discover, and extradite suspects located around the world to Bosnia and Herzegovina, especially in overseas countries, and at this moment we expect several extraditions from the US and France, where extradition proceedings are underway.