Access to ICTY Archive Urged

IWPR calls for the millions of pages of court documents to be open to the public once the court finishes its work.

At an international conference on the Hague tribunal’s legacy held in Sarajevo in early April, IWPR pointed out the importance of making the court’s archive accessible to members of the public after it closes down in 2015.

“Judicial institutions and non-governmental organisations in the region cannot agree on the future location of the Hague tribunal’s vast archive consisting of some 20 million pages of documents – whether it should be placed in Sarajevo, Zagreb, Belgrade or somewhere else. But more important than the archive’s physical location is its accessibility [to the likes of researchers and journalists],” Merdijana Sadovic, IWPR’s Hague tribunal programme manager, told the conference held on April 11.

Bosnia’s state prosecutor Milorad Barasin said the archive should be placed in Bosnia and Hercegovina, BiH, because the majority of crimes committed during the wars in the Nineties took place in this country. However, he noted that the United Nations Security Council will ultimately decide where the archive will be stored when the tribunal finishes its work.

Tribunal judge Bakone Justice Moloto informed the conference that one of the ideas being discussed at the moment is setting up several information centres in the region which would inform interested parties about the court when it closes down and help them access its archives.

The conference, entitled The Legacy of International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, was organised by the Belgrade Center for Human Rights and the Center for Human Rights at the University of Sarajevo, and brought together experts from the BiH war crime court, the Hague tribunal, regional NGOs and academia to discuss the importance and impact of the Hague tribunal in the region.

At the beginning of the conference, the results of a recent survey were presented by Zarko Markovic from Belgrade’s Center for Human Rights, which indicated that the majority of Bosnian citizens have a negative attitude towards the work of the tribunal and don’t think it contributed much to justice and reconciliation in the region.

Out of 1,045 BiH citizens who were surveyed in November last year, 59 per cent in the Republika Srpska, RS, entity had a negative opinion of the tribunal, compared with 41 per cent in the Bosniak-Croat entity Federation.

Sixty-three per cent of interviewees in the Federation said facing the past was important, while only 18 per cent in RS said the same thing.

Also, 85 and 38 per cent of Federation and RS citizens respectively said that war crimes trials should continue in local courts even when the Hague tribunal closes down in a few years.

Markovic pointed out that while most BiH citizens believe that establishing the tribunal was a step in the right direction, those who have a negative opinion about the court tend to believe that it has not adequately fulfilled its purpose.

"A large number of participants of this survey think that justice has not been [served]. Victims do not see the tribunal as a fair court, because in their opinion it either does not try key perpetrators at all, or it tries them at a very slow pace and renders sentences which are too mild,” Markovic said.

He added that the survey also indicated that the majority of Bosnian citizens were not familiar with any of the war crimes trials currently taking place at the tribunal, other than the trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

Bosnia’s state prosecutor Barasin pointed out that, in addition to the punishment of those most responsible for war crimes, the tribunal’s mission was also to prevent war crimes in the future.

“We cannot imagine what kind of climate there would be in BiH without the tribunal, because [without it] reconciliation would not be possible; perpetrators of crimes would still walk free, and that would have a negative influence on the process of reconciliation,” he said.

Judge Moloto noted that the tribunal is “the first tribunal which held procedures against political leaders and members of countries’ governments.

“Among many things, those processes are important for the victims of crimes, who, through the tribunal, are given the chance to talk in a dignified way about the crimes they were subjected to.”

He added that “the victims were brave enough to confront the criminals and say to their face what they think about their crimes”.

Judge Moloto further emphasised the tribunal’s role in prosecuting particular individuals, who were personally responsible for war crimes.

“Thanks to the tribunal,” he said, “those responsible for war crimes will know that that their actions will not be met with impunity.”

Like Barasin, Moloto agreed that the tribunal’s work could contribute to the prevention of future war crimes.

Sadovic also raised the issue of protected documents currently in the tribunal possession and what will happen to them once this court closes down. She particularly stressed the need for the confidential transcripts of the meetings of Yugoslavia’s Supreme Defence Council, SDC, to be revealed to the public before the tribunal finishes its work.

These documents, which Serbia gave to the tribunal in 2003 so that they could be used in the trial against former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, were marked as confidential at Serbia’s request, and have been kept away from the public ever since.

These transcripts are widely believe to contain key evidence of Serbia’s involvement in the wars in Bosnia and Croatia in the Nineties. Some of these transcripts will become available when the tribunal’s judges hand down the verdict in the case against former Yugoslav army chief, Momcilo Perisic, in July or August this year.

Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained reporter in Sarajevo.