Bosnia: Shock at War Crimes Acquittal

The decision of a Republika Srpska, RS, court to drop all charges against a group of former police officers in its only war crimes trial to date has sparked anger and disbelief.

The Banja Luka District Court’s February 11 verdict has been described as “shocking”, with politicians and analysts warning that it may have serious implications for the future of the Bosnian Serb entity.

Bosnia’s High Representive Paddy Ashdown had on earlier occasions warned RS that its continuing failure to cooperate with the Hague war crimes tribunal could lead to a revision of the Dayton Agreement, which brought the statelet into being.

The RS court’s verdict, observers say, has highlighted the Bosnian Serb entity’s apparent reluctance to face its past.

“[It] only confirms that the future of RS is in serious jeopardy if its judiciary continues to function the way it does at the moment,” said Branko Todorovic, executive director of the RS Helsinki Committee for Human Rights, which monitored the case from the outset.

“This case has clearly demonstrated that the RS is incapable of enforcing the rule of law on its territory.”

The former officers - Ranko Jakovljevic, Miroslav Cadja, Mile Rodic, Drazen Rakovic, Rade Savic, Gojko Kesic, Zoran Banovic, Miroslav Zec, Djordje Jelcic, Zoran Milojica and Slobodan Muzgonja - were accused of unlawfully imprisoning Catholic priest Tomislav Matanovic and his parents Josip and Bozana between September 14 and 19, 1995. This was defined as a war crime against civilians under the RS penal code.

The bodies of the three were found in a Prijedor well in 2001, but the officers were never charged with the murders – even though it was established that they were the last people to see the family alive.

A war crimes indictment was served against the group at the end of January 2003, and trial got underway on May 17 of that year. More than 50 witnesses were called to give evidence during the course of the trial.

In his summing up after the verdict last week, presiding judge Dusko Bojovic said that the evidence presented at the trial had not suggested that the group was guilty of the crimes they had been charged with.

“The testimonies of witnesses confirm that the order for detaining the Matanovic family came from Simo Drljaca, the then chief of the public security centre,” the judge said.

“There is no evidence to suggest that [they] had reason to believe the order was illegal because other non-Serb nationals in Prijedor were detained the same way due to the chaotic situation in the city at the time.”

Drljaca was the mayor of Prijedor at the time and was accused by the tribunal of responsibility for a number of war crimes committed in the area. He was killed in a firefight with SFOR soldiers in 1997 during a failed attempt to arrest him.

Todorovic told IWPR that his organisation had not yet had the opportunity to analyse the transcript of the verdict and the judge’s summing-up.

“However, on the basis of our continuous monitoring of the trial, one can say that [it appears that the] police and the prosecutor have committed a number of investigative errors [with the result that] the court lacked relevant facts that could have led to a guilty verdict,” Todorovic said.

He added it was a serious problem that had to be addressed to ensure that there was no repeat of acquittals in similar cases in the future.

Todorovic stressed that the Matanovic case was not the first instance of the RS judiciary failing to demonstrate its readiness to process such trials, pointing out that it has not served any other war crimes indictment against Serb or non-Serb nationals in the decade since the Dayton Agreement ended the war in Bosnia.

This failure – coupled with the RS authorities’ continued refusal to arrest fugitive Hague indictees believed to be at large in the entity – has prompted a series of warnings and censures from the international community’s High Representative Paddy Ashdown.

Several high-ranking RS officials have been removed from their posts, and Ashdown has hinted that the statelet may cease to exist altogether if it did not improve its record and increase cooperation with the tribunal.

Tomislav Tomljanovic, the Croat deputy Speaker of the RS national assembly, told IWPR of his “disbelief” on hearing of the acquittal. “We have put ourselves in a paradoxical situation with this verdict,” he said.

“We are all aware of the fact that many war crimes were committed [in RS] and yet these policemen have been [acquitted]. It only proves that the local judiciary is not ready for war crimes trials.”

Muharem Murselovic, a former inmate of the notorious Omarska and Keraterm prison camps in Prijedor and now a Party for Bosnia deputy in the RS parliament, shares Tomljanovic’s opinion.

“I am utterly shocked by the verdict, because after this, no case related to [these murders in] Prijedor can be proved,” he said.

“The fact is that the Matanovic family was viciously murdered. What we have now is a situation where the entire blame is being passed on to the late Sima Drljaca instead of establishing any individual responsibility for the crime.

“No matter how many evil things [Drljaca] had done, it is nonetheless unacceptable to assume that he was the only one responsible for all crimes committed in Prijedor.”

Murselovic – who witnessed the exhumation of the Matanovic family’s remains in the village of Trakoscani in 2001 – noted that they had been under house arrest before the killings, and that the autopsy showed that all three were handcuffed at the time of their deaths.

While he stressed that he did not intend to contest the court’s verdict, the deputy expressed his disappointment with it.

“I can’t say whether all this is being done deliberately or not, but it clearly shows that the people in RS are not prepared to face what happened during the war,” Murselovic added.

The office of Banja Luka’s Catholic Bishop released a public statement to the effect that it “cannot come to terms with the fact that the case related to the murder of Matanovic and his parents is effectively closed after acquittal of the 11 police officers”.

While the office stressed that it did not believe the 11 acquitted men to be guilty of the crime, it urged the RS authorities to resume its investigation into the murders in an attempt to bring those responsible to justice.

Analysts who have been following the case are unanimous in their belief that the police and the prosecutor’s office are to blame for the verdict, due to the “sloppy” nature of the investigation carried out by both.

RS vice-president Tomljanovic concluded, “I am afraid the Matanovic case might set a bad example for future investigations, in which case the [Bosnian state court] will have no choice but to take responsibility for processing war crimes trials itself.”

In response to queries from IWPR, the Banja Luka district prosecutor’s office said that it was yet to receive a written clarification of the verdict and therefore was not in a position to comment on the case.

But a source close to the district prosecutor, speaking on condition of anonymity, expressed surprise at the court’s judgement.

The prosecutor’s office would not say whether an appeal would be lodged.

Meanwhile, the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and RS’s majority nationalist government in Banja Luka have both declined to comment on the case.

Gordana Katana is a correspondent with VOA in Banja Luka.