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Lack of Transparency in the Justice System 

The principle of open justice requires that justice must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. Unless victims, witnesses, and society at large are aware of the efforts made to bring to justice those responsible for political and ethnic violence in Kosovo, justice will remain an abstract concept. Human Rights Watch research indicated a profound disconnect between efforts to bring about accountability through the criminal justice system and the awareness of victims and the public about those efforts. In particular, the international institutions charged with developing the justice system in Kosovo appear to lack an outreach strategy.

The failure to ensure that justice is seen to be done makes it extremely difficult to break the cycle of witness intimidation and apathy among the public. Until the public understands that perpetrators will be fairly tried and sentenced when guilty, they are less likely to come forward as witnesses.197

The failure is compounded by a lack of transparency in the operations of international and local institutions charged with managing the criminal justice system. During the course of the research for this report, Human Rights Watch—like many NGOs both inside and outside Kosovo—found it surprisingly difficult to obtain even basic information on the progress achieved for criminal prosecutions of March-related and pre-March 2004 inter-ethnic crimes cases, including war crimes. Compounded by the poor record keeping noted above, the attitude of secrecy that pervades many institutions in Kosovo is incompatible with the principle of open justice.

Lack of Outreach and Public Information on Accountability Efforts

Research in Kosovo has revealed a serious lack of knowledge about March-related criminal investigations and prosecutions. Almost all of the displaced persons as well as representatives of the municipalities and police stations interviewed by Human Rights Watch said they knew little or nothing about what had happened in terms of accountability after March 2004. They could not name or give even basic details about any cases that they knew of that had been taken up by a prosecutor, much less identify active steps being taken with regard to cases that pertained to them, their families, or to other members of their former communities. Some of the people we interviewed suggested that they had no right to know what was happening with criminal prosecutions. In the words of one displaced person: “We do not have information on this. This is a reserved power of UNMIK.”198

Among the dozens of people displaced from six different municipalities interviewed by Human Rights Watch for this report, the only March-related prosecutions of which they were aware were two extremely high-profile cases. The first was the highly-publicized murder of Slobodan Peric and the beating of his mother in Gnjilane, which resulted in the lengthy sentences referred to above. The second was a case against an alleged ringleader in the North Mitrovica region—a site of widespread property destruction during the March violence—that was discontinued for lack of evidence before reaching trial.

Those who were aware of the two cases knew about them through local television and print media. Even those whose communities were affected by these crimes had not been contacted by police, prosecutors, local or municipal or other officials, either about the investigations or the outcome of the cases.

None of the displaced or recently returned minority community members we interviewed had been personally visited by authorities in an effort to inform them of progress on cases relating to the destruction of their own homes—even just to inform them that there was not enough evidence to prosecute so the case had been closed. In fact, it appears that in some March-related cases individuals filed discrimination claims with a special unit within the Department of Justice, claiming that their cases had not been prioritized, only to later learn that their case had long been closed.199

We also found that in a number of cases local officials had not been informed of pertinent investigations and prosecutions relating to their jurisdiction.

This lack of knowledge reflects the absence of any outreach or other public information effort, making it virtually impossible for justice to be seen to be done. It reinforces the perception among many people that Kosovo is a place of rampant impunity, where those who commit serious crimes will never be brought to justice, and eclipses whatever progress has been made on that score.

Lack of Transparency in the Operation of the Criminal Justice System

It is difficult to obtain accurate and up-to-date information on the investigation and prosecution of war and ethnic crimes, particularly for those predating March 2004. Members of the public, journalists, and representatives of national and international NGOs all face the same difficulty accessing such information. Each of the institutions involved in the criminal justice system has a role to play in ensuring transparent and regular information of the progress on criminal investigations and prosecutions. But at present their work is all too often shrouded in secrecy. The lack of transparency compounds the failure to conduct outreach as described above.

Although the Department of Justice issues weekly updates of cases, this information is an internal document and not publicly available. There is no alternative publication or other communication channel set up to ensure that regular information about March cases, war crime cases, or other cases, is available to people outside UNMIK. Department officials told Human Rights Watch that anybody requiring particular information can contact them. In their view it is not their role to regularly disseminate information about case decisions or progress toward achieving accountability for particular groups of crimes.200 

It is highly unlikely that members of ethnic minority communities, many of whom are subject to very restricted freedom of movement, would be aware of the right to request such information from Department of Justice officials in Pristina, much less how to go about doing so.

When asked why the DOJ does not produce regular public reports about progress on the prosecution of ethnic violence, a senior official in the department said that it is tasked solely with the “most serious cases [and is] not a political office.”201 She further emphasized:

We are judges and prosecutors. This is our mandate. . . . If you want information on the local courts for us it is a bit different. This is a different mechanism. This is the OSCE; they have the whole picture.202

Mid-level Department of Justice staff told Human Rights Watch that there had been repeated suggestions from the international prosecutors in the Criminal Division to create a DOJ-based website where copies of case documents and other documents relevant to prosecutions could be uploaded for public use, like in Sierra Leone and at the ICTY. When asked why this had not yet happened, a staff member from the Criminal Division said: “it is a management issue. No one has sat down and thought about doing it. Then there are the resourcing and staffing issues.”203

Obtaining information about municipal court case decisions is even more of a challenge. In the absence of a computerized database of court decisions, the only way to obtain such decisions is to request physical copies of judgments individually from each court.  

Only the Legal Systems Monitoring Section of the OSCE routinely monitors municipal court decisions. (The Department of Justice has the right of access to these decisions, but it appears not to collect such information systematically.204 The Department of Judicial Administration, though technically responsible for oversight and administration of the national judiciary, maintains only superficial statistics, and does not collect or analyze case decisions.) The OSCE, however, does not systematically or routinely share information about these cases publicly. Although the organization is tasked with human rights and judicial system monitoring, the reality is that its staff and resources are primarily focused on continued capacity building within local institutions.

The situation surrounding reports on cases stemming from the March 2004 violence illustrates these concerns. Despite the fact that the OSCE maintains statistics on and detailed transcripts of cases, including those relating to March violence, they were reluctant to impart that information until December 2005, when the mission released a public report on the subject. The information provided in that report, while useful, was only presented in aggregate form, and lacked detail on individual cases.

Moreover, although the OSCE did monitor war crimes trials until the fall of 2002, it has since shifted its focus to capacity building and monitoring of municipal courts and district courts where there are national panels. The OSCE does not expect to publish further updates or reports on the progress of domestic war crimes trials,205 which means that there is no clear alternative information source with access to these cases. Nor is there regular and public monitoring of trials conducted with international judges and prosecutors.206

The reluctance within the OSCE to make its monitoring information public appears to be motivated by a concern within the organization that if it were to regularly publicize information that reflected poorly on the courts, it might jeopardize its work to develop those judicial institutions in Kosovo.207 The result is that the only international institution with both the capacity and mandate to monitor and report on the operation of the criminal justice system appears often reluctant to do so publicly.208




[197] For a discussion of witness intimidation and protection issues relating to the March 2004 cases see OSCE LSMS, “The Response of the Justice System to the March 2004 Riots.”

[198] Human Rights Watch interview with a displaced person, Kosovo, September 21, 2005.

[199] Human Rights Watch interview with Department of Justice staff, Pristina, November 15, 2005.

[200] Human Rights Watch interview with a senior official and an international prosecutor, Department of Justice, Pristina, November 16, 2005.

[201] Ibid.

[202] Ibid. Another high-ranking official within the Department seconded this sentiment, telling Human Rights Watch, “We are a prosecutors’ office, not in the report-writing business. We have a number of cases and when we have the goods we go to trial.” Human Rights Watch interview, Department of Justice, Pristina, February 3, 2006.

[203] Human Rights Watch interview with criminal division staff member, Department of Justice, February 22, 2006.

[204] Human Rights Watch interview with Department of Justice staff, Kosovo, October 25, 2005; Human Rights Watch interviews with OSCE staff, Department of Human Rights and Rule of Law, September–November 2005; and Human Rights Watch interview with senior staff, Department of Justice, Pristina, November 16, 2005.

[205] Human Rights Watch telephone interview with official in the OSCE LSMS, November 14, 2005.

[206] The transformation of the Ombudsperson Institution from an international to a local institution exacerbates the lack of national human rights capacity, and puts under threat an important mechanism of accountability in Kosovo, especially given a recent UNMIK regulation that limits the institution’s jurisdiction to the PISG (and not UNMIK). UNMIK Regulation No. 2006/6 “On the Ombudsperson Institution in Kosovo,” UNMIK/Reg/2006/6, entered into force February 16, 2006, [online] http://www.unmikonline.org/regulations/unmikgazette/02english/E2006regs/RE2006_06.pdf (retrieved April 14, 2006).

[207] Human Rights Watch interviews with staff from the OSCE Mission in Kosovo, and nongovernmental organizations present in Kosovo, November–December 2005.

[208] One OSCE staff member commented that “[t]here is an overlap between the OSCE and the DOJ, as with the OSCE and UNMIK at the municipal level. The fragmented way in which the U.N. mission was set up does not allow for sharing and clarity. If an H.R. [human rights] officer would immediately share what he or she gathered maybe that would be wrong, but there needs to be both capacity and transparency.” Human Rights Watch interview with OSCE staff member, OSCE headquarters, Pristina, January 24, 2006.


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