Court reporting

The nostalgia for socialist Yugoslavia in some Balkan countries indicates dissatisfaction with present-day conditions, a historian who led research on the issue told BIRN.

Bosnian sailors and shipping crews have been hit by delays in procedures within the country's bodies for issuing identity documents.

The Ministry of Civil Affairs, the ministry responsible for issuing shipping and maritime ID booklets, has been unable to produce them while regulations and a contract for the booklets were still being coordinated.

Prosecutors from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Montenegro, as well as the Hague Tribunal and the EU’s Kosovo mission, told a BIRN conference that states must work together to prosecute war crimes.

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network has launched a unique database of the publicly-available final verdicts delivered in 348 war crimes cases by courts in the former Yugoslavia and by the UN tribunal in The Hague.

State funding for favoured media outlets, a generally poor economic situation and self-censorship among journalists pose a real threat to objective public information and make the outlook for the Serbian media worse year by year, a BIRN Serbia report entitled "Soft censorship, Changes in media sector - from bad to worst", issued on Thursday, writes.

BIRN documentary on some of the most brutal crimes of the Kosovo war had its international premiere at this year’s Sarajevo Film Festival.

A TV documentary programme made by BIRN journalists from Bosnia and Herzegovina explores how investigators collected evidence to prove that the massacres of Srebrenica’s Bosniaks 20 years ago were genocide.

The Balkan Investigative Reporting Network's regional media conference, entitled 'Media Freedom Challenges', will be held on Friday June 12, in Sarajevo, where BIRN's directors and media experts will debate the main obstacles to media freedom in the Balkans.

The European Commission will not release funding to pay the salaries of over 140 judiciary employees unless the Bosnian authorities adopt justice sector reforms, an EC official told BIRN.

BIRN Serbia and Human Right House organised the first in a series of debates on media freedom on Thursday in Belgrade's Media Centre.