Bosnian state court in Sarajevo

The OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina said in an information sheet published on Tuesday that only 18 war crimes cases were completed last year, compared to a total of 49 in 2020.

It also said that at the end of 2020, "there remained a backlog of 571 unresolved cases involving 4,498 suspects".

Rade Macura, the wartime commander of the First Company with the Second Battalion of the Bosnian Serb Army's First Gradiska Brigade, appeared before the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo as his trial opened on Monday and pleaded not guilty to war crimes against the civilian population.

"Twelve fathers and 13 sons were killed" in the attack on the village of Novoseoci in September 1992, the prosecutor said as the trial of nine Bosnian Serbs began at the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo on Friday.

Mile Pazin's defence launched an appeal on Wednesday at the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo against last September's verdict finding him guilty of the inhumane treatment of a Bosniak civilian prisoner during the war.

Ex-servicemen Pero Radic, Bozo Vidovic, Petko Tomic, Branko Studen, Vlado Ristanovic and Milan Mijic went on trial for crimes against humanity on Wednesday at the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo.

In closing statements at the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo on Wednesday, Sakib Mahmuljin said that as the wartime commander of the Bosnian Army Third Corps, he was not responsible for the crimes allegedly committed by foreign fighters.

The trial of Mile Ujic, who is accused of persecuting Bosniak civilians during a widespread and systematic attack in the Rogatica area, opened at the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo on Thursday.

Belgrade Higher Court has awarded a total of around 1.8 million euros in compensation and refunds of legal costs to defendants who were acquitted of war crimes by the Serbian judiciary or had their charges dropped, documents obtained by BIRN show.

A hearing in the case against wartime Territorial Defence fighter Dusan Spasojevic at the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo was cancelled on Tuesday as his lawyer said he had received a message from the defendant's relatives saying that he had absconded.

"On Friday I got a text message from the relatives: 'He has left,'" said defence lawyer Nenad Rubez.

The Bosnian state prosecution on Friday charged Milan Lukic, the wartime leader of the Avengers paramilitary group, with crimes against 20 passengers who were abducted from a train at Strpci station near Visegrad in eastern Bosnia in February 1993 and then murdered.