Indictment

The Humanitarian Law Centre NGO said in a report published on Friday that the pandemic slowed down war crimes investigations and trials that were already taking too long to complete in Serbia.

A state of emergency was imposed in Serbia from March 15 to May 6 2020, and war crimes trials resumed at the end of May under special protective measures.

Courthouses in Turkey will start using thermal cameras at their entrances to screen for fevers to prevent anyone potentially infected with the coronavirus from entering the premises, Justice Minister Abdülhamit Gül said on May 29 as the country's judiciary is set to resume its work as part of its normalization phase.

The chief prosecutor at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers and Prosecutor's Office, Jack Smith, notified the president of the Specialist Chambers for the second time about that he intends to initiate proceedings before the Hague-based 'special court', it was announced on Tuesday.

The Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre NGO said in a report published on Wednesday that Serbian war crimes prosecutors are continuing to issue only a small number of indictments, most of them in cases transferred from Bosnia and Herzegovina, and none of them charging high-ranking suspects.

The trial of Agan Ramic, who is accused a mistreating a minor while serving with the municipal headquarters of the Bosnian Army's Territorial Defence force in Konjic during the war in 1992, opened on Wednesday at the state court in Sarajevo.

As Angela Griep, a spokesperson for The Hague tribunal, told "Politico", the statutory deadline for confirming or rejecting the indictment is six months.
This means, according to the newspaper, that the names of the indictees will be known no later than August, after which the trials on the confirmed indictments will be scheduled.

An amended version of Oliver Ivanovic murder case indictment, which has been seen by BIRN, accuses his political party's administrator, Silvana Arsovic, of being part of an organised criminal group that was behind the killing.

Speaking to Kosovo online about the indictment raised in the case of Oliver Ivanovic's murder, and the trial that recently commenced in Pristina, Milena Ivanovic says she is disappointed that even after two years, there are no names of those who either executed or ordered this killing.

SDP Civic Initiative leader Oliver Ivanovic was killed on January 16, 2018, in Kosovska Mitrovica.
The preliminary hearing will be closed to the public and the accused will briefly plead the indictment, the evidence presented during the trial will be discussed, and the court's decision on the request of the prosecutor to order home detention for the three defendants is expected.

"There are still many mass crimes, particularly in the eastern Bosnia area, whose perpetrators have not been charged as yet, although solid documentation about these crimes exists," said Vidovic.

She said that the state prosecution should focus its resources on these more serious cases rather than on "less extensive crimes and less significant cases in terms of perpetrators' rank".