Regional Cooperation Lift for Wars Crimes Justice

A meeting in Belgrade last week between Serbia’s war crimes prosecutor and Bosnia’s state prosecutor received scant attention in the press.



But it is a further sign of an important trend in the Balkans, which has seen increasing cooperation in recent years between officials in Serbia, Bosnia and Croatia to help bring to justice those who were responsible for crimes in the bitter conflicts of the Nineties.



Until recently, such teamwork between these former enemies would have seemed inconceivable. In the past, state prosecutors have struggled to get access to other countries’ wartime archives and witnesses travelling to neighbouring states to testify have in some cases been subject to harassment and humiliation at the hands of local nationalists.



But today observers say regional cooperation has become a cornerstone of transitional justice in the Balkans.



Cooperation of this kind between Serbia and Croatia is founded on accords signed in 2001 and 2005, intended to advance efforts to tackle organised crime and war crimes. While the first agreement set out the basic principles that were to govern cooperation between the two countries, the second established a more structured framework for how this cooperation would proceed.



Under the terms of these accords, Zagreb and Belgrade are required to exchange intelligence and other documents and information that could help efforts to investigate war crimes.



Given that so many regional agreements in the past have collapsed with little to show for them, the general opinion was that these outward signs of collaboration were intended as little more than a fig leaf to satisfy the international community.



This impression was reinforced by the circumstances which led to the signing of another key agreement between Croatia and Serbia and Montenegro in 2004, envisaging direct cooperation between their respective prosecution services. In this case, the document came into being at a meeting of experts at Palic Lake, under the watchful eye of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, OSCE.



But despite the doubts, officials and observers today say the results of all this work have been impressive.



“The main purpose of these agreements was to ensure quick and efficient cooperation, especially when it comes to the exchange of intelligence, information and documents,” Martina Mihordin, a spokesperson for Croatian attorney general Mladen Bajic, told IWPR. “These accords have enabled the prosecutors’ offices to work closely together. The results we have achieved so far are excellent, and we communicate on a daily basis.”



This kind of cooperation has played an important part in Croatia’s investigation of war crimes allegedly committed by Croat fighters against Serbs in the eastern city of Osijek in 1991. In November last year, the Osijek district attorney was able to travel to Belgrade to take part in hearings designed to elicit evidence from witnesses now living in Serbia, which could then be used in the ongoing work by the Croatian prosecutors. The witnesses testified before a Serbian judge, with the Osijek prosecutor also getting a chance to ask questions of them.



“Without such cooperation, war crimes could not be prosecuted,” Ivo Josipovic, a professor at the Zagreb law faculty told IWPR. “It’s a well known fact that quite often we have witnesses in one state and the indictees in another, as well as the evidence. So, without full support from the other state, which includes the exchange of data and locating witnesses, there cannot be efficient prosecution of war crimes.”



This is also well illustrated in the ongoing trial before the Vukovar District Court of 17 individuals accused of involvement in an incident in October 1991 which is considered to be one of the worst atrocities of the conflict in Croatia. Soldiers of the Yugoslav People’s Army, JNA, are alleged to have made Croats from the village of Lovas walk though a minefield, resulting in 21 people being killed and 14 wounded.



The lead defendant in the case, Milos Devetak, and a number of his co-defendants live outside Croatia, and the proceedings have stumbled on in their absence. In addition, the Croatian prosecutors have been forced to try to get by without access to the JNA archives, which are in Serbia. The trial is now into its fourth year and there have been concerns that at this rate, it might never reach its natural conclusion.



But last year, Serbian war crimes prosecutors became involved in the case. A senior official within the Vukovar court told IWPR that their assistance was expected to be of great value.



A spokesperson for Belgrade’s war crimes prosecution service, Bruno Vekaric, confirmed that cooperation was also valued from Serbia’s point of view. “Belgrade’s war crimes court currently deals with more than 20 so-called ‘regional cases’,” he said. “Many of them are the result of cooperation between Serbia and Croatia.”



As a prime example, he cited trial proceedings linked to a video made public through the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, last year, apparently showing the murders of six Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica by members of the notorious Scorpions paramilitary unit. Former Scorpions members have since gone on trial in Belgrade and Zagreb.



Vekaric also noted “very extensive cooperation” in relation to recent trial proceedings in Croatia in which a number of former Croatian military policemen were convicted of abusing detainees in the Lora military prison in Split in 1992.



The findings of guilt against the men came after the Croatian Supreme Court had overturned the results of a previous trial, which exonerated them. These earlier proceedings were dogged by problems - which were largely addressed in the re-run - including an unwillingness on the part of witnesses from Serbia to testify.



Besides cooperation between Belgrade and Zagreb, Croatian and Serbian officials have also established a good working relationship with the public prosecutor’s office in Sarajevo, judiciary spokespersons from all three countries told IWPR.



According to an Associated Press report on last week’s meeting between Serbian war crimes prosecutor Vojislav Vukcevic and Bosnia’s state prosecutor Marinko Jurcevic, the two agreed that cooperation in relation to war crimes investigations is crucial. A statement by Vukcevic’s office apparently said that Jurcevic had expressed satisfaction with efforts so far to work together in connection with “high risk” cases in both Belgrade and Sarajevo.



ICTY prosecution spokesperson Anton Nikiforov confirmed that cooperation has improved in recent years and had reached a stage where “in our assessment, it is very good”.



“We take some credit for this,” he added, explaining that Hague tribunal officials had been pushing for greater cooperation for some time, bringing officials from the countries of the former Yugoslavia together at various forums and then, about two years ago, pressing for them to start to help one another out independently of the tribunal.



He acknowledged that there are still some problematic issues in this area, however, citing as an example the unwillingness of Serbia and Croatia in particular to extradite citizens suspected of war crimes to neighbouring countries to face trial.



“We are concerned that there will be cases unanswered and unaddressed if this is not resolved,” he said.



He added that one possible solution in such situations is for case materials to be transferred to the country where the individual in question is a citizen, so that he or she can be tried there instead.



Interstate cooperation in the field of transitional justice in the Balkans is not just limited to the sharing of information and evidence at an official level.



Last year, Belgrade tried a number of individuals for involvement in the infamous massacre of people taken from the Vukovar hospital by JNA troops in November 1991. Thanks to the combined efforts of Serbian and Croatian non-governmental organisations, relatives of the victims were able to travel to Belgrade to observe the proceedings. In a gesture that was well received in Croatia, the Humanitarian Law Fund in Belgrade covered the costs of the trip.



In addition, two groups of Serbian journalists travelled to Croatia in May and June this year in order to visit the public prosecutor’s office and local courts, like those in Vukovar and Split, at which war crimes trials are being held. The aim of these tours - one of which was funded by the OSCE, the other by the American embassy in Croatia - was to provide the journalists with an insight into how the transitional justice process was progressing across the border.



This autumn, again with the help of the OSCE, Croatian journalists are expected to make a similar trip to Serbia.



Drago Hedl is an IWPR contributor in Osijek.