Bosnian Genocide

The Bosnian state court on Tuesday convicted three Bosnian Serb Army ex-soldiers, Branko Cigoja, Zeljko Todic and Sasa Boskic, of committing crimes against civilians in the village of Oborci Donji Vakuf municipality on September 13, 1995.

The president of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, Carmel Agius, told the UN Security Council on Monday evening that the final verdict in the Ratko Mladic trial will be delivered nine months after appeals hearings are finally held.

She said that after the relaxation of the pandemic restrictions, the court decided that trials of up to five defendants could start again on June 1. Those hearings will be conducted in two biggest courtrooms in the state court building in Sarajevo, where appropriate distance between all the participants can be ensured.

The commemoration was a scaled-down version of the annual White Armband Day event in Prijedor, where large-scale crimes were committed during the war including killings, expulsions and the unlawful detentions of civilians in prison camps.

A total of 3,176 people were killed in the area, among them 256 women and 102 children - the majority of them Bosniaks.

The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague said on Thursday that it has postponed next month's appeals hearings in the Ratko Mladic case because of travel restrictions imposed due to the coronavirus pandemic.

"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.

The Constitutional Court ruled on Wednesday that former Bosnian Army soldier Edhem Zilic's challenge to the verdict convicting him of war crimes against civilians was unfounded.

"The Constitutional Court has determined that the appellant's right to a fair trial was not violated," the court said in its decision.

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.

The Bosnian state court told BIRN that it has rejected the indictment charging Tadija Mitrovic with crimes against humanity during the war in 1992 because there are not sufficient grounds to suspect that he committed the crime.

A 'red notice' has been issued by Interpol to alert countries around the world that former Territorial Defence fighter Dusan Spasojevic, who has both Serbian and Bosnian citizenship, is wanted in Bosnia and Herzegovina for war crimes against civilians.