Radovan Karadzic

Radovan Karadzic's lawyer Peter Robinson told BIRN that the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals decided earlier this month to temporarily allow UN Detention Unit prisoners to make video calls to immediate relatives after the former Bosnian Serb political leader appealed to the UN court.

These are just a few examples of respectful tributes that have been paid to war crimes defendants and convicts in public spaces in Bosnia and Herzegovina over the past few years.

"Not only does [genocide denial] cause unimaginable pain for those who have survived genocide and for those who have lost love ones, it is one of the most reliable portents of future violence," she said.

Carmel Agius, the president of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, ordered the UN court's registrar to institute a video communications service for detainees such as former Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic by May 14.

To understand how important this was, one has to know that the Srebrenica Memorial Centre operates in a very hostile environment in Bosnia's Serb-dominated entity Republika Srpska, where denial of the Srebrenica genocide is widespread, alleged war criminals live freely, and there is little state support for truth-seeking and research of wartime crimes.

Click to enlarge
Witness statement by Rialda Musaefendic. Photo: Screenshot

Click to enlarge
Witness statement by Rialda Musaefendic. Photo: Screenshot

Twenty-eight of her colleagues were injured in the shelling of the RTV building, and one lost his life.

The Association of Defence Counsel Practising Before the International Courts and Tribunals urged the UN's Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Friday to free elderly war crime convicts to help ensure that they are not infected with the COVID-19 virus.

"He saw us. I saw him too. He raised his hand, he waved… They went off towards Potocari. I have never seen him again," she said.

Malagic has testified at four trials of Bosnian Serbs military and political officials at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague - the cases against Radislav Krstic, Radovan Karadzic, Zdravko Tolimir and Ratko Mladic.

Families of victims, Bosnian politicians and ordinary Sarajevans gathered to lay flowers and pay tributes on Wednesday at the site of the Markale market shelling on the 26th anniversary of the deadly attack during the siege of Sarajevo by Bosnian Serb forces.

The House of Peoples, the upper house of the Bosnian parliament, voted on Thursday against changing the criminal code of Bosnia and Herzegovina to criminalise the denial of genocide and war crimes.