BIRN Fact-Check: Is Serbia Unjustly Targeting Bosnians for War Crime Arrests?

When former police official Edin Vranj was arrested last weekend while entering Serbia on suspicion that he committed war crimes against prisoners of war during the 1992-95 Bosnian conflict, officials in Bosnia and Herzegovina responded furiously.

The Bosnian Foreign Ministry issued a warning on Tuesday, calling on "all citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina who were in any way involved in the defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the period from 1992 to the end of 1995 not to travel to the Republic of Serbia until further notice".

"The warning is issued due to the risk of arrests and trials in the Republic of Serbia on war crimes charges, and on the basis of previous cases of arrests of Bosnia and Herzegovina's citizens against whom no proceedings are being conducted in Bosnia and Herzegovina or who have not been charged with war crimes by Bosnia and Herzegovina's judicial institutions," the Foreign Ministry said.

Two members of Bosnia's tripartite presidency, Sefik Dzaferovic and Zeljko Komsic, said in a joint statement that the arrest of Vranj was "abusing the principle of universal jurisdiction in the prosecution of war crimes".

"The fact that, on the one hand, the Serbian authorities are protecting convicted [Bosnian Serb] war criminal Novak Djukic, as well as a number of suspects in the Srebrenica genocide and other crimes, and on the other hand continuously arresting members of the [wartime] Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina's armed and police forces, clearly indicates that the real goal is not prosecution of war crimes, but selective persecution with political motives," Dzaferovic and Komsic said.

BIRN's fact-check of some of those claims shows that Serbia can justify Vranj's arrest in legal terms, but that its actions in...

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