Sarajevo to Pay €358,000 for War Crime Suspects’ Defence

Vasvija Vidovic, a lawyer who has represented former Bosnian Army soldiers at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the Bosnian state court, argued that defendants find themselves difficult financial situations because trials are long-running and very expensive.

"Hardly anyone, even if they are in a good financial situation, would have enough money to pay for the defence," Vidovic said.

She also argued that Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia's Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity had been allocating resources for the defence of their citizens at war crimes trials for years.

"Of course the state should help as it can," Vidovic said.

During the trials of former Bosnian Serb political and military leaders Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the government of Republika Srpska allocated around 5,100 euros per year for their defence, while Serbia and Croatia also partially financed the defence of some of their war crimes suspects.

Former judge Vehid Sehic, of the Forum of Tuzla Citizens, said that he also sees nothing wrong with Sarajevo Canton's decision to assist war crime defendants, given that Croatia, Serbia and Republika Srpska have done the same.

"Helping them is a humane act. Now, the amounts and cases to which it should be applied should be regulated under certain decisions by both legislative and executive powers, because we can see that proceedings last a very long time," Sehic said.

But Aleksandra Letic of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Republika Srpska entity argued that decision is disputable because the financial aid is only intended for former soldiers of the Bosniak-led Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina. She also said that the money could be better spent on more socially-necessary...