20 years in anticipation of justice and recognition
On Sunday, March 24, it was 20 years since the systematic campaign of ethnic cleansing and violence against Kosovo Albanians, carried out by the armed forces of the Serbian army and police during the NATO intervention in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), began. The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) calls on the institutions of the Republic of Serbia to ensure justice for victims of crimes in Kosovo, prosecuting all those responsible, regardless of their position at the time of the commission of the crime, or within the current hierarchy of power. And it calls for public recollection of their suffering.
According to the HLC and the HLC Kosovo data, between March 20 and June 14 1999, Serbian forces killed 6,872 Albanians in Kosovo. The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) established that over 800,000 Albanian civilians were deported, that an unspecified number of people were subjected to torture and sexual abuse, and that a significant part of Kosovo Albanian property and religious buildings – were destroyed.
Due to the frequent removal of the content from the official website of the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor (OWCP), the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) wishes to point out a tendency to put at risk the public’s right to know about the war crimes trials taking place in Serbia. Namely, over the past few weeks, the contents of the war crimes 
The Appeals Chamber of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals composed of Judge Vagn Prüsse Joensen, presiding, Judge William Hussein Sekule, Judge José Ricardo de Prada Solaesa, Judge Graciela Susana Gatti Santana, and Judge Ivo Nelson de Caires Batista Rosa delivered today its judgement on the appeals filed by Mr. Radovan Karadžić and the Prosecution against the judgement rendered on 24 March 2016 by a Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (“ICTY”).
The Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor (OWCP) dismissed the criminal charge filed by the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) at the beginning of February 2019, for the crimes against humanity committed in October 1991 in Morović (Šid). It was then that members of the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) took the Abjanović brothers from their house, after which every trace of them was lost. The criminal charge was dismissed because, in the interpretation of the OWCP, the prosecution of crimes against humanity violates the principle of legality. With this explanation, the OWCP continues its practice of failing to process crimes against humanity committed in the territory of the former Yugoslavia, thus denying the right of a large number of victims to finally receive justice.
