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War Crimes Shrouded in Silence in East Herzegovina

By Erna Mačkić,Trebinje

Trebinje

05 March 2010  War criminals responsible for pre rapes and murders in the Trebinje area have little to fear; barely anyone has been convicted so far - and that’s how it looks likely to remain.

Prosecutions of war crimes in eastern Herzegovina area have ground to a halt over the past two years, mainly because of a shortage of prosecutors and of measures to protect witnesses.

Many war victims and NGO representatives feel tempted to give up, doubting the willingness of the local police or the courts to work seriously on such cases in future.

Local judicial officials insist the employment of new staff would partly solve the problem. They say they already requested this from the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of Bosnia and Herzegovina. But no one has yet been appointed to the vacancies, after existing candidates were deemed inadequate.

The District Prosecutor's Office in Trebinje covers ten municipalities, including Bileca, Ljubinje, Berkovici, Gacko, Nevesinje, East Mostar, Kalinovik, Foca and Cajnice.

At the start of the war in 1992, Bosnian Serb forces drove out the non-Serb minorities – Croat and Bosniak (Muslim). Some were raped and tortured. Thousands were killed, or went missing and are presumed dead. According to the data of the Research and Documentation Centre, more than 6,000 people, mostly Bosniaks, remain missing, believed killed.

Few survivors of this campaign of ethnic cleansing returned to their old homes. Today, the town of Trebinje is populated almost entirely by Serbs, apart from a handful of Bosniak families, about 20, who returned after the war. The situation is replicated in the other municipalities of eastern Herzegovina.

In spite of the high death toll in the regional the District Court in Trebinje has handled only six war-crime cases - and only two persons were convicted.

In July 2008, Mile Govedarica was found guilty of crimes against civilians and sentenced to seven and a half years in prison. After his appeal, the Republika Srpska Supreme Court raised his sentence to nine years imprisonment.

Zoran Pljevaljcic was sentenced to five years in prison in 2008.

The District Prosecutor’s Office in Trebinje says that the main reason for this inaction is lack of prosecutors. Srdjan Vukanovic, the Prosecutor’s Office spokesman, says they have only five prosecutors working on all cases, and there are not enough to devote a special section to war crimes.

“We repeatedly addressed the issue to the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council of BiH on staffing issues,” he said.  “We’ve had a vacancy for a Deputy Chief Prosecutor since December 2008 and still no one is employed, so investigations in progress can’t be finished.”

The High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, HJPC, at a session in early February, decided to repeat the selection contest for the post of Deputy Chief Prosecutor in Trebinje. Marjana Popovic, a HJPC spokeswoman, said this was done for reasons of ethnic balance. “The Deputy Chief Prosecutor should not be of the same nationality as the Chief Prosecutor,” she said. “The competition was canceled in order to meet the nationality balance.”

Dzevad Muratbegovic, a Bosniak, was Deputy Chief Prosecutor in Trebinje, until December 2008 but then became the Prosecutor in the State Prosecution Office.
Many believe the weaknesses of the Trebinje Prosecution Office are reflected in the outcome of the existing war-crime trials, in which four of the six accused were acquitted.

Dusko Popic, Trebinje’s District Court judge, blames the Prosecutor's Office in Trebinje for this poor record. “The problem is that the evidence presented by the Prosecution Office has not been sufficient,” he maintained.

Okruzni sud u Trebinju

Another problem is that the District Court in Trebinje cannot offer protection for witnesses that would meet the terms of the Law on the Witness Protection Programme, adopted by the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH in June 2003.

Vukanovic said the failure to implement this law had seriously impeded the ability of the District Prosecutor's Office in Trebinje to prosecute war crimes. “Witnesses feel fear [and] … they are looking for our protection but we cannot provide it,” Vukanovic admitted.

Witnesses suspect that if they spoke out they would suffer revenge attacks from former neighbours and be driven from their homes or even killed.

Blazo Stevovic, of the NGO “Alternative Club”, who is investigating war crimes committed in the East Herzegovina region, claims the Prosecution Office and the court in Trebinje “does not want not to see about 20 people killed in Trebinje, 177 killed in Gacko, and 350 killed in Nevesinje”.

“The prosecution of war crimes is knowingly obstructed because of the intense pressure of political leaders, some of whom are suspected for war crimes in BiH, as well as in Croatia,” he said.

“So, judges and prosecutors stick to saying ‘Let sleeping dogs lie.’ Everything is known but nothing is being done,” he added.

Victims’ representatives take a similar line, claiming the prosecution Office in Trebinje has no desire to take on war criminals. “The District Prosecutor’s Office in Trebinje does not have the will to arrest the suspects,” Bakira Hasecic, president of the Association of Women – Victims of War, said. “It’s left to the victims to take police officers and lead them to the perpetrators of war crimes.”

Hasecic said that she’d spoken several times with Trebinje’s prosecutors, and their answer was always the same; that ‘They are searching for the perpetrators of war crimes.’”

Two years ago, Hasecic went with witnesses to testify in the case against Momir Skakavac, accused of war crimes in Foca, in the District Court in Trebinje only to be exposed to open, public intimidation. On entering the court building, people “from the nearby cafés started shouting abuse”, she said.

A straw poll conducted in the town by Balkan Insight revealed strong resistance to the idea of Serbs facing further war-crime trials, with many people maintaining that “not only Serbs” must answer for the crimes.

“All those who committed war crimes should be brought to justice. But not only Serbs, they are not the only ones who committed the crimes,” one local in Trebinje told BIRN TV Justice.

Another local, who said he took part in the war, insisted that war crimes were not being processed fairly. At The Hague Tribunal “the Serbs are being sentenced to more than 1,000 years in jail, while almost all Muslims are acquitted”.

Fuad Serdarevic, a returnee in Trebinje, disagrees. Some crimes have not been punished. It known who committed them, he said, but no one in this area is going to come forward in such an atmosphere. He recalled an incident where local youths insulted people attending the mosque.

“Personally, I have not had any threats, but the incidents that took place in the mosque does make you feel scared”, Serdarevic said.

In such a climate, many doubt whether processing of war crimes in Eastern Herzegovina will ever get far.

Erna Mackic is BIRN’s Justice Report journalist. erna@birn.eu.com. Justice Report is BIRN online publication.

This article is made possible by the support of the American People through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID.) The contents of this article are the sole responsibility of Balkan investigative reporting network (BIRN) and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.