Serbia, Bosnia Spend €3.6 Million on Acquitted War Suspects

Belgrade Higher Court has awarded a total of around 1.8 million euros in compensation and refunds of legal costs to defendants who were acquitted of war crimes by the Serbian judiciary or had their charges dropped, documents obtained by BIRN show.

The total amount of compensation awarded by the Bosnian state court in Sarajevo over the past eight years has also exceeded 1.8 million euros, according to official data gathered by BIRN.

The 1.8-million-euro total in Serbia is made up of around 852,000 euros that were paid in compensation for unlawful detention and some 941,000 euros to cover the legal expenses of acquitted defendants.

The official Serbian documents obtained by BIRN, which detail payments made up to July 10 last year, indicate that the largest sums went to those acquitted of involvement in the torture and killing of some 200 people at Ovcara farm in eastern Croatia after the fall of the town of Vukovar to the Yugoslav People's Army and Serbian paramilitaries in November 1991.

The defendants who were acquitted in the Ovcara case were awarded a total of around 468,000 euros in legal costs and some 327,000 in compensation.

In Serbia, if defendants are acquitted, or if the court rejects the charges against them, the prosecutor drops the case or it passes the statute of limitations, they have the right to be reimbursed for the expenses that they have incurred during the process.

Costs for lawyers in Serbia are defined by an official list of tariffs, and the costs are highest if the potential sentence is over 15 years, as it is in war crimes cases.

According to decisions on expenses obtained by BIRN, Belgrade Higher Court ruled that, in accordance to with the tariff list, lawyers got around 522 euros for attending...