Bosnia: Peace Anniversary Year Sees War Crimes Trial Slowdown

According to the plan, work on hundreds of unsolved cases should be completed by 2023.

However, the deadline set in the previous national strategy, which envisaged that the most complex war crimes cases would be solved by 2015, was not met, and some legal experts doubt that the new strategy will succeed either.

"I am convinced that the deadline will not be met. I am convinced that the strategy will be revised again and the deadline extended," said Miodrag Stojanovic, a lawyer who represents war crime defendants before the Bosnian state court.

Stojanovic said that the coronavirus pandemic, which initially halted all trials in the country earlier this year, was another reason for this. After the initial court shutdown in March, trials resumed, but hearings in cases with more than five defendants were not permitted to be held due to restrictions to curb the spread of the virus.

"Sometimes a month or two passes without hearings, because defendants catch the coronavirus or their lawyers catch it or expert witnesses cannot come from another country [because of restrictions]," said Minka Kreho, president of the Criminal Section at the Bosnian state court.

The prosecution of war crimes cases at the state level was criticised by British judge Joanna Korner, a former prosecutor at the Hague Tribunal, in a report in September.

Korner said the prosecutor's office continues to file indictments charging individuals who live outside the country and cannot be brought to court, and suspects who are already serving long-term sentences. She also pointed to the need to transfer less complex cases to lower-level courts to ease the state court's workload.

If there is sufficient evidence to prosecute the remaining 4,000 potential suspects...