Victim associations wrote to BiH Minister of Justice Josip Grubeša

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - Associations of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide and the Movement of Mothers of the Srebrenica and Žepa Enclaves sent an open letter to the BiH Minister of Justice Josip Grubeša, in which they state that they have on several occasions addressed the Ministry of Justice regarding the revised Strategy for working on war crimes cases.

- In response to yesterday's address by the BiH Minister of Justice, Josip Grubeša, in which he invited victim associations to submit their remarks regarding the proposed revised State Strategy for working on war crimes cases, we wish to point out that we have addressed the BiH Ministry of Justice on several occasions regarding the revised Strategy.

We sent the first letter to the mentioned ministry on December 5, 2017, for the first time after we learned that the Strategy was being revised, which was hidden from the public. In this letter, signed by seven victim associations, we asked Minister Grubeša to include us as an interested (aggrieved) party in the process of drafting the revised Strategy. Neither the minister nor anyone else from the ministry has ever responded to this letter.

Furthermore, after we, again unofficially, got access to the draft of the revised Strategy, we sent remarks and proposals on the draft strategy to the Ministry of Justice on February 5, 2018. We primarily requested that the Ministry of Justice include legal experts from our universities, who are best qualified to comment on its implementation, in the working group.

The Ministry of Justice did not respond to any of our proposals, but instead sent the draft to the Council of Ministers for adoption. The victim associations then asked the Council of Ministers not to adopt the revised strategy in its current form, but to return it to the Working Group for revision, which would this time include experts and representatives of the victims - it is stated in the letter signed by the president and president of the associations, Murat Tahirović and Munira Subašić.