In the period following the toppling of Slobodan Milošević, the transitional government supported domestic war crimes trials, but it soon became clear that serious impediments existed. Police was not willing to share its data on war crimes perpetrators with prosecutors, primarily because most of them belonged to the police. On the other hand, prosecutors and judges were not able to secure victims’ participation in war crimes trials because of their mistrust in Serbian institutions.
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The book in front of you portrays the court truth about the responsibility of Saša Cvjetan, charged with the war crime against civilian population committed on 28 March 1999 in Podujevo, Kosovo. The documents, chronologically sorted, show how a trial, initiated on a factually incomplete and selective indictment, grew into a serious process against denial, lies, and impunity.
The great merit in this process belongs to Judge Biljana Sinanović who was led in this proces exclusively by the law, as well as to the surviving children, whose words in the courtroom we listened to with the feeling of shame not being able to look them in the eye.
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During the course of 2003, Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) investigators visited all the settlements in Kosovo inhabited by persons belonging to ethnic minorities and interviewed 497 Serbs, Montenegrins, Roma, Bosniaks, Turks, Gorani, Egyptians, Ashkali, and Albanians. They paid special attention to the returnees. The investigators discussed with the interviewees the matters of security, freedom of movement, access to administrative and judicial authorities, access to health and social welfare services, employment, education, access to property, participation in political life, and return. The data they gathered indicate some improvement in 2003 regarding the freedom of movement and the return of refugees. This is a major step forward compared with the preceding period when Serbs in particular ran the risk of losing their lives outside their settlements.