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State Prosecution Unveils War Crimes 'Catalogue'

05 September 2008  The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina has unveiled a new war crimes investigation catalogue.

The State Prosecution has created "a war crimes catalogue", which contains an overview of the crimes committed in the period from 1992 to 1995. The catalogue, which will not be available to the general public, does not elaborate on how many people nor crimes might be processed in the near future.

Nevertheless the document, which has been made available to the public, indicates that about 55 people have been tried before the local courts in Bosnia since the end of the war, while the Special War Crimes Section of the State Prosecution has filed indictments against 99 people over the past two years.

It further states that it is extremely difficult to ascertain the exact number of people, who will be indicted at some point, because "there are hundreds of open investigations, conducted in various prosecutors' offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina, dealing with thousands of suspects."

"The Prosecutor's Office does not want to specify the exact number of these cases, because many of them deal with the same crimes or perpetrators, so, giving any figures at this stage would be misleading... However, the fact is that about 90,000 people were killed in the course of the war, many of whom were probably war crime victims," the strategy proposal states.

The catalogue, which the Prosecution calls "the yellow pages", is expected to contribute to the more efficient solving of war crime cases and, in particular, help prioritise cases. It is thought that, in its work, the Prosecution will "focus on the victims and the number of victims of each crime" and it will not focus on establishing "an artificial balance between different ethnic groups".

The following three principles will guide its work: the detection of most severe crimes, detecting the perpetrators who are responsible for certain crimes, and using these two principles to build a solid case.

The document indicates that the State Prosecution has already collected precise data on the time and locations at which the most severe war crimes were committed. As an example, it mentions Srebrenica in 1995 and Prijedor in 1992. In addition, it alleges that, on the basis of the research, the Prosecution has made a list of around one hundred municipalities in which crimes were carried out. This list will "be used for ensuring that the selection process is as fair as possible".