LESS AND LESS TIME FOR JUSTICE: How is the BiH Prosecutor's Office changing the narrative of the aggression against BiH?

(Patria) - Cases sent by the Hague Tribunal to BiH within the Rules of the Road contain Category A cases where there is sufficient evidence according to international legal standards that a person is responsible for grave breaches of international humanitarian law.

Out of approximately 4,500 cases, the ICTY determined for 848 individuals (so-called A-list) that there is sufficient evidence to initiate indictment proceedings against them before domestic courts. However, this is not enough for the BiH Prosecutor's Office to finally get to work.

Through the Revised Strategy, it was secured that these cases become a priority in the work of all prosecutor's offices. The BiH Prosecutor's Office was tasked, in accordance with Annex B of the Revised Strategy, to collect all information and prepare a complete strategy for working on these cases.

The BiH Prosecutor's Office, and Chief Prosecutor Gordana Tadić herself, have repeatedly stated that they have completed their part of the work.

According to persistent statements from victims' associations, these lists also include the highest levels of responsibility, and according to available information, individuals responsible for crimes committed during the siege of Sarajevo. It is known that since the signing of the Dayton Agreement until today, there have been no indictments for the siege of Sarajevo in BiH.

Is it necessary to mention that a trial is underway against Dragan Vikić and others for the defense of the city of Sarajevo!?

Gordana Tadić's story does not hold up. All analyses show this. According to data, for as many as 325 individuals on the A-list, there is no information about indictments being filed. There were only 95 final convictions. Allegedly, 190 cases/individuals marked with the standard 'A' are currently being processed.

We remind you that the Council of Ministers of Bosnia and Herzegovina adopted the Revised State Strategy for the Prosecution of War Crimes in September last year, but it is already happening that the deadlines set by it are not being met because a supervisory body for monitoring the implementation of the Strategy has not yet been formed.

Meanwhile, Tadić obediently works for HDZ BiH and SNSD, and there is less and less time for justice.

The BiH Prosecutor's Office is trying to review the work of the Hague Tribunal through fabricated trials and thus diminish the most serious crimes committed by neighboring countries in BiH.

Representatives of the international community in Bosnia and Herzegovina – the EU, USA, and OSCE – consider it crucial that all levels of government in BiH ensure that the judiciary prosecutes war crimes cases independently, impartially, professionally, and transparently, that this process must be free of politicization, with full respect for the final and binding decisions of the court and consideration of facts already established before domestic and international courts, which particularly applies to the verdicts of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

However, BiH is far from that. No one has yet been prosecuted for glorifying war criminals, while in public, for example, General Mehmed Alagić and war criminal Radovan Karadžić are treated equally. Everyone knows that Alagić was not convicted of war crimes.

However, by prosecuting Bosniaks, the BiH Prosecutor's Office is directly siding with those who deny genocide. I say this with full right, because the Prosecutor's Office has never explained to us why it did not first resolve the A-list cases from the Hague Tribunal, and has initiated a series of proceedings, mostly against Bosniaks, who were not on that list.

The goal was to reach the day when war crimes cases could be transferred to lower judicial instances, so it is clear what was being strived for and why we received a series of indictments for Joint Criminal Enterprise against Bosniaks.

They accuse Bosniaks in order to equate the Joint Criminal Enterprise in Herzegovina with the liberation operation of the 5th Corps, in which the HVO and the Croatian Army forces participated together. If Prosecutor Tadić and her associates had simply read the acquittal verdict of Ante Gotovina in The Hague, they would have known there was no basis for indicting Atif Dudaković and others.

With him in the dock are 15 other members of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, whom, for example, no witness mentions by name and surname.

But anything is possible when acting illegally and fabricating indictments through witnesses who are willing to lie and receive various protection measures. In the end, the citizens of this country pay for all of this, so they are not worried about the costs.

Cases where groups are accused of war crimes against Bosniaks or Croats are becoming increasingly rare, as in the cases where Croats and Bosniaks are accused in the Orašje, Konjic, Ilijaš, and Bihać cases.

What creates an additional problem is that many perpetrators and those responsible for the most serious crimes and genocide are unavailable to the BiH judiciary and are mostly located in Serbia. War criminals are thus protected, or sham trials are conducted before the Serbian judiciary. If these suspects were extradited to the BiH judiciary, the real role of Serbia in the aggression against BiH would be revealed.

Precisely for this reason, some have left BiH so as never to be prosecuted. All responsibility is shifted to Croats and Bosniaks through brutal media propaganda, in which the state apparatus of Serbia participates, an attempt is made to change the character of the war and equate the responsibility of the aggressor and the victim.

In the last year alone, almost 150 Bosniaks and Croats have been indicted for alleged crimes against Serbs, and Serbia has largely succeeded in shifting responsibility to the political-military leadership of Bosnian Serbs for individual responsibility. In several cases, generals and commanders of the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the HVO have been indicted.

This approach by the BiH Prosecutor's Office and Court will result in unforeseeable consequences, and the ultimate goal will be to change the narrative of the aggression against BiH, implying that Serbs were forced to defend themselves from attacks by Bosniaks and Croats.

Brussels has recognized this, and hopefully, BiH politicians will also act.

(A.Č.Z.)