War crimes trial

The Bosnian state prosecution said on Monday that Ranko Cesic, Slobodan Ljubicic and Stojan Petrovic have been charged with committing a crime against humanity in the Brcko area between April and December 1992.

Cesic and Ljubicic are accused of killing four civilian Bosniaks, and of unlawfully and violently detaining female civilians, after which they raped and sexually abused them.

The OSCE Mission to Bosnia and Herzegovina said in an information sheet published on Tuesday that only 18 war crimes cases were completed last year, compared to a total of 49 in 2020.

It also said that at the end of 2020, "there remained a backlog of 571 unresolved cases involving 4,498 suspects".

Two Croatian human rights organisations criticised Croatia for the "slow processing of war crimes" in a statement to mark the European Day for Victims of Crime on Monday.

A Dutch investigation into former Bosnian Croat military official Slobodan Praljak’s suicide at the UN war crimes tribunal in 2017 failed to establish how he obtained the poison that he took in the courtroom.

Appeals against Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic's 40-year prison sentence will be heard before judges at a UN tribunal at The Hague in April.

The president of the UN war crimes tribunal, Theodor Meron, said on February 27 that the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals will hear "the appeals in the case" on April 23 and 24.

The UN war crimes tribunal will appoint a legal representative to represent Serbian nationalist leader Vojislav Seselj at his upcoming appeal hearing because he has refused to return to the court.

The UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague refused Bosnian Serb general Radivoje Miletic’s request for early release because he has not served two-thirds of his sentence, according to the court’s reckoning.

The UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague has turned down Croatia’s request to be allowed to participate in the trial of six former Bosnian Croat officials from the Herzeg-Bosna wartime statelet.

Croatia has filed an appeal to the Hague war crimes tribunal, asking to be allowed to participate in the trial of six former Bosnian Croat officials, but prosecutors have objected.

The UN war crimes tribunal has stepped up its demands for the extradition of three wanted members of the Serbian Radical Party, but Belgrade officials responded by saying that the case is closed.