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Executive Summary

During the 1992-1995 armed conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina (hereafter Bosnia), there were widespread and serious crimes committed against civilians, prisoners of war, and civilian property, including killing, torture, rape, forcible displacement, and indiscriminate and deliberate attacks on civilian targets. Many of the crimes were committed in territory controlled by Bosnian Serb forces. Almost half of the individuals indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) are Bosnian Serbs.

For most of the past decade there has been effective impunity for war crimes in Republika Srpska (the predominantly Serb entity of Bosnia). By November 2005, only two war crimes trials had been completed in Republika Srpska. In contrast, over fifty war crimes cases were heard during the same period in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bosnia’s other entity), including more than a dozen involving defendants from the dominant ethnic group in the location in question. Serbia and Montenegro carried out thirteen trials in the same period, all but one involving Serb defendants, and Croatia had a large number of trials, including nine trials involving Croat defendants.

However, in late 2005 war crime prosecutions began to gain momentum in Republika Srpska. In two trials completed in November and December respectively, a court in Banja Luka convicted a total of four ethnic Serbs on war crimes charges, and one Serb was convicted in the town of Trebinje in December. As of early February 2006, a war crimes trial against an ethnic Serb was ongoing in Trebinje district court, and another one involving a Serb defendant in Banja Luka district court. Prosecutors in charge of war crimes prosecutions in several parts of Republika Srpska were also nearing completion of other investigations.

The rise in the number of prosecutions reflects a greater willingness of Republika Srpska to bring war crimes suspects to trial. In addition, the creation of the new Sarajevo War Crimes Chamber has significantly increased the number of war crime cases likely to be heard in Republika Srpska. During 2005, the Special Department for War Crimes in the Office of the Prosecutor of Bosnia and Herzegovina carried out a review of war crimes cases investigated in Bosnia. While the most serious cases are likely to be prosecuted in the War Crimes Chamber in Sarajevo, a large number have already been referred to local prosecutors in Republika Srpska and the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Special Department for War Crimes has transferred around forty cases to Republika Srpska prosecutors, and further transfers are possible.

This new impetus towards prosecuting war crimes in Republika Srpska creates a significant opportunity to reform the criminal justice system. At present, war crimes prosecutions in Republika Srpska are hampered by a range of obstacles. These include limited prosecutorial resources, including shortages of support staff and lack of investigative capacity, and an expanding case load; the absence of specialist war crimes prosecutors, reflecting both a lack of expertise in humanitarian law and the fact that the mandate of prosecutors is not focused exclusively on war crimes cases; insufficient assistance by Republika Srpska police, coupled with a failure to make use of evidence available from other sources; witness intimidation and fatigue; and the non-availability of suspects.

Fair and effective war crimes prosecutions in Republika Srpska are important to overall accountability efforts in Bosnia. Moreover, the crimes at issue are very serious, and their proper resolution is a matter of great interest to victims and their families. The experience from elsewhere in the region and the examination of recent accountability efforts in Republika Srpska suggest that domestic war crimes prosecutions are likely to pose a range of challenges—including lack of investigative capacity and experience on the part of prosecutors and judges, ethnic bias in prosecutions, and inadequate witness protection—that will need to be tackled head on if the trials are to meet international standards.

Based on the research conducted for this report, Human Rights Watch believes that there are several measures that can be taken to help ensure the trials are consistent with international standards. They include the introduction of professional investigators in the prosecutorial offices at the district level, and an increase in the number of prosecutors where the increased number of war crimes investigations so requires. Prosecutorial offices should also make greater use of law clerks in war crimes prosecutions, and make full use of available sources of information relevant to the investigation, including information gathered by nongovernmental organizations, and ICTY transcripts and other material.

History will judge whether the most recent progress on war crimes in Republika Srpska marks a definitive departure from a decade of effective impunity. For that progress to be sustained, it is vital that Republika Srpska, and the national authorities in Bosnia, address the obstacles to more effective prosecutions in the Bosnian Serb entity.