Bosnian Croat Officials to Appeal Trial Arrangements

In May, the judges hearing the case said that, in principle, the amount of time taken by prosecutors to examine any given witness should be divided amongst the defence lawyers when it came to cross-examination. If the examination-in-chief of a witness by prosecutors lasted an hour, the six defence teams should have an hour between them to ask their own questions.



In situations where the defence teams failed to come to an agreement over how to divide this time, the judges said it ought to be shared equally between them.



The defence lawyers argued that this arrangement failed to allow for the complexity of the case against their clients. They also complained that it had been unfairly influenced by the judges’ desire to finish the trial quickly in order to help meet plans for the tribunal to close down within the next few years.



As an alternative solution, the defence counsel suggested allocating time for cross-examination on a case-by-case basis, depending on the nature of a given witness’s testimony.



In their written decision on the matter, the trial judges said they were convinced their decision was reasonable. But they accepted that important issues were at stake and gave the go-ahead for the defence teams to take the matter to the court’s appeals chamber.



In issuing their decision, the trial judges also noted that an appeals ruling on this issue could have important consequences for other trials involving multiple defendants which are due to start in The Hague later this year.



Jadranko Prlic, Bruno Stojic, Slobodan Praljak, Milivoj Petkovic, Valentin Coric and Berislav Pusic are all former officials in the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, which was in charge in Croat-run parts of Bosnia during the war. They are accused of playing key roles in the persecution of non-Croats.



Only one previous trial at the tribunal has ever involved so many defendants. That case, however, focused on war crimes committed during an attack on a single village.