New indictments for war crimes announced

New indictments for war crimes announced

BELGRADE -- Serbian Deputy War Crimes Prosecutor Bruno Vekarić announced indictments against over 40 war crime suspects in the next few months.

They concern Istok, Štrpce, and Srebrenica cases.

The Serbian Prosecutor's Office has been working on the cases for three years now as these are very demanding procedures and cannot be completed within short periods of time like regular cases, Vekarić said on Tuesday at a gathering focusing on the war crime trials in Serbia in 2013.

The debate in Belgrade was organized by the Humanitarian Law Center and USAID. The deputy prosecutor agreed with the assessments that the number of war crime indictments raised in 2013 was low, with only seven trials launched against 14 suspects, and pointed to the problems the Prosecutor's Office is facing.

Vekarić agreed with the criticism voiced by Humanitarian Law Center Director Sandra Orlović who said that the punitive policy is generally mild when it comes to war crimes, but he explained that the prosecution had to adjust to the new Code of Criminal Procedure and prosecutorial investigation standards in the past few years.

Head of the Rule of Law and Human Rights Department with the OSCE Mission in Serbia Romana Schweiger said that it is impossible to organise trials against everyone and added that resources should not be wasted and instead, the authorities need to focus on the most important cases.

Orlovic also voiced criticism against the Belgrade High Court and the Appellate Court over their mild punitive policy and the tendency to keep data anonymous, but she underscored that the procedure is the same in other countries in the region too.

High Court...