During the presentation of the annual report on war crimes trials
For the Serbian leadership, the recent adoption of the UN General Assembly Resolution on Srebrenica was unnecessary, as the country has already tried those responsible for war crimes. A careful analysis, however, shows a very different reality
A few days after the adoption of the United Nations General Assembly Resolution on Srebrenica, the issue no longer seems to be topical in Serbia. The message being spread through the country is that President Vučić won in New York, transforming a legal defeat into a moral victory, as repeated by pro-government newspapers and tabloids the day after the vote.
During his speech at the United Nations President Vučić, commenting on the fact that the resolution on Srebrenica referred to individual criminal responsibility, suggested that those responsible for the genocide had already been tried and therefore there was no need for the UN resolution. Based on what has been stated, it would therefore seem that the issue of war crimes trials is now relegated to the past in Serbia.
Is it really so? The presentation of the annual report on war crimes trials by the Center for Humanitarian Law provides an opportunity to understand the state of affairs. The work done by the Center (FHP) is a precious source of information on this delicate trial, which remains essential to close the chapter on the conflicts of the 1990s.
It must be said that the issue of war crimes seems to have been completely forgotten by much of the media in Serbia, perhaps also because official sources, such as the War Crimes Prosecutor's Office and the Ministry of Justice, have not published recent updates on the strategy for trying war crimes in Serbia: the latest reports date back to the end of 2022 and beginning of 2023 .
When official sources are silent, little information comes from reports from non-governmental organisations limited to the cases followed and the European Union's progress report .
A slow, obscure process
The picture is far from encouraging. The work of the Prosecutor's Office is proceeding slowly and there are no signs that it will speed up in the near future. In 2023, the Office completed only three cases, one of which was forwarded by the Bosnia and Herzegovina Prosecutor's Office which did not require investigative efforts by the Serbian Prosecutor's Office. The two requests for indictment completed by the war crimes prosecutor's office, where 11 prosecutors plus the chief prosecutor work, have not yet been confirmed by the judge.
Nenad Golčevski, director of the Center for Humanitarian Law, is categorical: “The conclusion we can draw is that the work of the War Crimes Prosecutor's Office was unacceptably inefficient in 2023”.
The 2023 result is not an isolated case: in the last six years only 39 requests for indictment have been completed, but of these, 23 (59%) were forwarded by other prosecutors in the region. Only 16 requests are the result of the work of the Serbian prosecutor's office in the last six years, which means 2.28 cases per year.
Even more worrying is the fact that it is currently unknown how many cases are still in the pre-investigative phase, for which investigations have not yet begun. In 2022 and 2023 there were around 1,700 , as also reported by the European Union Progress Report on Serbia, but the lack of official information makes it difficult to make precise estimates, as these cases are not followed by the FHP. So not only does the prosecutor's office work very slowly, but it is not known precisely how much work remains to be done.
It is also worrying that the Belgrade prosecutor's office makes excessively generous use of the power to anonymise proceedings, even going beyond what is foreseen by internal regulations. This has also happened in cases where there is a public interest in knowing the facts, or in cases where the names of the parties involved have already been made known to the public.
This practice is contrary to the aims of the National War Crimes Strategy, which aims to advance society's awareness of war crimes. War crimes prosecutions therefore remain completely anonymous , and society and the media are kept in the dark about such proceedings.
Cooperation with other prosecutors in the region
Another problematic aspect is regional cooperation between prosecutors' offices, in particular with Bosnia and Herzegovina. This regional cooperation clashes with the Serbian authorities' practice of not extraditing Serbian citizens to Bosnia and Herzegovina. The problem in this sense is given by the agreements on dual citizenship between Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia: Bosnian Serbs in particular can easily become citizens of Serbia.
In some cases, crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, between people residing in the same municipality or village, such as killings of civilians in Vlasenica (37 civilians killed) or Ključ (78), are being tried in Belgrade because the defendants, who at the time were members of the Republika Srpska army, have in the meantime fled from Bosnia and Herzegovina and become Serbian citizens.
This practice, although compliant with the law in force, makes it more difficult for witnesses and victims to participate in trials in Serbia, so much so that many prefer to opt out. “Regional cooperation must work in both directions, at the moment we almost only have cases transferred from Bosnia to Serbia”, confirms Golčevski.
In this way, the Serbian Prosecutor's Office, instead of investigating cases on its own, essentially works on cases investigated and prepared by the Bosnian Prosecutor's Office and relating to crimes that occurred in Bosnia. This becomes even more problematic for cases such as that of Miomir Jasikovac, one of the commanders of the Zvornik military police.
Jasikovac was accused by the Bosnian authorities of genocide for illegally imprisoning over 2300 people, after the capture of Srebrenica, and for taking them to the place where they would later be executed. In this case, the Serbian authorities, as soon as they learned of the accusations in Bosnia, started parallel proceedings in Serbia , as Jasikovac was in Serbia. The proceedings ended in a few days: Jasikovac agreed to a minimum sentence of 5 years and neither Srebrenica nor the charges of genocide are mentioned in the documents. The number of victims was reduced to just over 300.
The attitude of the authorities and the media
Serbian authorities continue to deny crimes and glorify war criminals. For example, in June 2023 General Lazarević received the “Emperor Lazar” recognition from the Toplica district, as an "example for the young generations of how to fight and defend the homeland".
Lazarević served a 14-year prison sentence imposed by the Hague Tribunal for crimes against humanity in Kosovo. Lazarević himself was then a regular guest at ceremonies organised by the Ministry of Social Affairs. The same units responsible for war crimes, such as the 37th motorised brigade of the Yugoslav army, received tributes from high Serbian dignitaries, including the Minister of Defence.
In the area where the 37th brigade operated in Kosovo, there were approximately 1,400 Kosovar Albanian civilians killed. In one notable case, Serbian General Nebojša Pavković gave a lesson on Serbian heroes to pupils at an elementary school. The lesson took place via videolink from prison in Finland where Pavković is serving 22 years for war crimes committed in Kosovo.
On the other hand, the Serbian authorities have maintained a strict silence on the "Stanišić and Simatović" ruling of May 2023 issued by the Hague Tribunal, in which Serbia's direct participation, through its secret services, in the conflicts in Bosnia and Croatia was established, something that the Serbian authorities have always denied.
The war crimes trials taking place in Serbia are mostly taking place in silence. While state television RTS has regularly followed the case of some Serbs on trial in Osijek, Croatia, for war crimes, there is no coverage of the trials in Serbia, where the defendants are mostly Serbs.
On the contrary, newspapers like Politika have given space and published interviews with war criminals who have contested the facts for which they are convicted. But this is not surprising: “In a society where the Minister of Justice openly denies the Srebrenica genocide and the authorities engage in an international campaign to deny the genocide, it is not surprising that the media themselves are engaged in a campaign to deny and to relativise war crimes”, concludes Golčevski bitterly.
The contents of the resolution on Srebrenica
In light of the performance of the Serbian authorities in trying war criminals and the now countless episodes of glorification of war criminals in Serbia and Republika Sprska, the resolution on Srebrenica, rather than dredging up the past and sowing further divisions, serves as a reminder that the obligation to try war criminals of war does not expire.
And perhaps this is precisely one of the reasons that best explains why the Serbian authorities have been so committed to the campaign against the resolution on Srebrenica: these obligations have not been respected and the relativisation process is working at full capacity.
