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New Team to Tackle War Crimes

29 November 2007  

A new chief and his deputy take over their duties in the Special Department for War Crimes with the Prosecution of BiH.

David Schwandiman, from the United States of America, is the new chief of the War Crimes Section with the State Prosecutor's Office, while Milorad Barasin, former chief prosecutor of the Cantonal Prosecutor's Office in Livno, will be his deputy.

Addressing the media in Sarajevo, Schwandiman and Barasin said that they were aware of "the difficult task facing them", but they "are ready to give their best" in order to complete that task.

Schwandiman sent out a clear message to war crimes suspects, saying: "If you are responsible for some crimes committed during the war - no matter which side you were on - you cannot hide from us. It does not matter how powerful you are, or how powerful you think you are."

The War Crimes Section with the Prosecutor's Office of BiH became operational in March 2005. Up to June 2007 it was headed by Vaso Marinkovic, who is now Chief Prosecutor of the Cantonal Prosecutor's Office in Livno.

In his speech, Schwandiman said that "nobody will put pressure on the section or influence the decision making of the Prosecution of BiH".

"There is no room for competition between the international organisations, which have indicated they want to control the activities of the Special Section for War Crimes. This does not help at all. It drags us away from the work we must perform," Schwandiman said.

Although the journalists insisted on getting more details on the organisations in question, Schwaniman did not want to specify which ones he had in mind, or in what way they wanted to control the work of the section.

"I said that in general terms, because it is natural that outsiders wish to tell others how to do things," Schwandiman said.

Milorad Barasin mentioned that the Special Section for War Crimes was facing "a lot of work".

"About 16,150 persons have been reported as potential perpetrators of war crimes. We tackle the problem of such large number of suspects and war crime cases in a very serious way. The Prosecution of BiH has initiated, together with other organisations, the preparation of the state-level strategy for the processing of these cases," said Barasin, adding that he hoped the strategy would help war crime cases to be processed in accordance with the state laws.

Barasin explained that the strategy should ensure that we have sufficient number of prosecutors, judges and police officers to deal with war crime cases.

Schwandiman obtained his university degree at Utah University in 1976.Most of his career was in military field, and he got the rank of corvette captain while he was in the navy. Since 1987 he was Assistant State Prosecutor of Utah state. From 1993 to 1998 he was Assistant State Prosecutor of the USA. Among other things, his biography indicates that he was a member of the Crisis Group with the US State Prosecutor's Office for ten years.

Milorad Barasin was born in Srbac, Republika Srpska, in 1961. He obtained his university degree in Banja Luka in 1985. His biography says, inter alia, that he was a judge with the court in Srbac and that he was appointed as the public prosecutor in that town in 1992. It also says that he was the first prosecutor from BiH to leave one entity to work in the other. This happened when he became the chief prosecutor in Livno in 2003.