Bosnian Prosecution Files Just Two War Indictments in Six Months

From January to the end of June this year, the Bosnian state prosecution has only charged two people with wartime crimes, BIRN has learned, despite a huge backlog of unprosecuted cases related to the 1992-95 conflict in the country.

One of the indictments charged former Bosnian Serb Army military policeman Goran Viskovic, alias Vjetar (Wind), who is already serving an 18-year sentence for crimes against non-Serbs in the Vlasenica municipality, including two rapes.

The new indictment accuses him of having participated in the persecution of the Bosniak civilian population as part of a widespread and systematic attack in the Vlasenica and Milici municipalities from April 1992 to the end of 1993.

He stands accused of having personally participated in the killing of eight Bosniak civilian prisoners who were held at the Susica detention facility in Vlasenica, and of unlawfully detaining civilians who were subsequently abused.

Considering that Viskovic is already in jail, the new indictment represents a waste of public resources, Bosnian legal experts have argued.

The second indictment filed by the prosecution this year charged Rade Macura, former commander of the First Company with the Second Battalion of the Bosnian Serb Army's First Light Gradiska Brigade.

The indictment alleges that Macura, together with his subordinates, killed a group of Bosniak civilians in the village of Turjak, near Bosanska Gradiska, on June 23, 1992.

Bosnian lawyer Asim Crnalic said that because the coronavirus pandemic has affected all aspects of public life, it should not be concluded that the prosecution has been doing nothing because only two war crimes indictments have been filed so far this year.

But Crnalic said it was unacceptable...