Strasbourg court

The European Court of Human Rights ruled in a decision that was made public on Tuesday that 11 current, former or retired officers of the Yugoslav Army and the Army of Serbia and Montenegro were not denied a fair hearing by the courts in their legal battle over allegedly underpaid salaries.

The best-known among them is the Sejdic-Finci case, brought by Dervo Sejdic and Jakob Finci, members of Bosnia's Roma and Jewish communities who, under Bosnia's postwar constitution, are barred from running for parliament or the presidency given that they do not belong to any of the country's 'constituent peoples' - Croats, Bosniaks or Serbs.

Kalinic pointed out that this reminds him of a time 30 years ago when Serbs uniquely, regardless of their different party affiliation, made the historic decision to establish Republika Srpska.

European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) rejected the request to ban Montenegro from implementing its Law on Freedom of Religion until the Constitutional Court decides on the law's constitutionality or until a deal with the Serbian Orthodox Church is concluded, the Montenegrin Government said.

The European Court of Human Rights, ECHR, on Thursday ruled that Russia has violated human rights and the right to freedom and security in the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria, which it has de facto controlled since it broke away from Moldova in 1992.

"He is the first, because the notion of whistleblower did not exist in the Strasbourg Court's vocabulary until then," Vitalie Zama, one of the lawyers in Guja's case, told BIRN.

"And the first question that was asked was whether or not to protect the whistleblowers; whether freedom of expression exists for them or not."

'I suffered the consequences'

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg said on Tuesday that it has ruled that Bosnia and Herzegovina must amend the country's electoral law to allow local elections to be held in Mostar after an 11-year gap.

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg said in a judgment published on Tuesday that the state of Montenegro must compensate KIPS because the mayor of Podgorica, Miomir Mugosa, prevented it from building a shopping mall in the Stari Aerodrom district of the capital in 2005.

The Strasbourg court recognized Italy's right not to accept the "Sea Watch 3" humanitarian ship with rescued migrants. The ship, which has been in the Mediterranean for 14 days, has asked to land on the Italian coast.

The European Court of Human Rights rejected the request of the crew of the ''Sea Watch 3'' ship to land in Italy.

On 20 and 21 June the Department for the Execution of the European Court's Judgments is organising a round table in Sofia on the Strasbourg Court's judgments against Bulgaria concerning ineffective investigations into violations of the right to life and the prohibition of torture and other forms of ill-treatment, including the need to ensure that investigations targeting a Chief Prosecutor are