Case Klecka: Legality won but not the justice
Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo has published the analyses from the trial “Arben Krasniqi et al”, known as “Klecka case”.
Humanitarian Law Center Kosovo has published the analyses from the trial “Arben Krasniqi et al”, known as “Klecka case”.
In 2003, the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) strongly supported the establishment of the Prosecutor’s Office and the judicial councils for war crimes in Serbia. In the absence of communication and cooperation among the countries in the region, the HLC facilitated support from the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of Croatia for the first first trial for war crimes committed in Croatia (the Ovcara case). By the end of 2011, as many as 70 victims and witnesses from other countries had testified before the Higher court in Belgrade at the HLC’s invitation. The HLC handed a video recording of the execution of Muslims from Srebrenica to the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor (OWCP), based on which the OWCP pressed charges against members of the Scorpions police unit. The HLC enabled the families of victims from Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Kosovo to monitor trials. The HLC represented, and continues to represent, victims’ families in every major war crimes case before trial chambers of the Higher Court in Belgrade – War Crimes Department.
The Report on War Crimes Trials in Serbia in 2011 you can download here.
A debate on war crimes trials in Serbia was held on Friday April 27th, 2012 in the Media Centre in Belgrade. The reason for organizing this debate was the Report on War Crimes Trials in Serbia in 2011 published by the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC). Representatives of the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor, the Higher Court in Belgrade Department for War Crimes, the Court of Appeals in Belgrade, the courts from all over Serbia, attorneys, representatives of civil society, and representatives of embassies participated in the debate.
Here you can download the documents of the Yugoslavian Army [Source: Judicial data base of the ICTY], which further confirms the allegations of the HLC, presented in the File ‘Ljubisa Dikovic’, in their integral form.
The annex contains excerpts from public documents of the Yugoslav Army, which additionally prove the allegations made by HLC, which have been expressed in the Ljubiša Diković Dossier, published on January 23rd, 2012 regarding the presence of the Yugoslav Army 37th Motorized Brigade units in the area of Drenice in Kosovo, where mass killings of Albanian civilians and other gross violations of international humanitarian law occurred. You may download the document here.
Download documents:
Here you can read the aforementioned items of the “Ljubiša Diković” file that these documents relate to: (soon in English).
Ample evidence – including that on which the ICTY verdict in Milutinovic et al was founded; the statements of the survivors of the Drenica massacre, who either testified before the ICTY, or who have given statements to the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC); documents stored in the ICTY’s public database – all indicate that a number of serious and massive war crimes were committed against ethnic Albanian civilians in the then zone of responsibility of the newly appointed Chief of Staff of the Army of the Republic of Serbia, Lt. Gen. Ljubisa Dikovic, who at the time the crimes were committed was Commander of the 37th Motorized Brigade of the Army of the FRY. During the NATO bombing, war crimes were committed by members of Yugoslav Army (VJ) forces and forces of the Ministry of the Interior (MUP). Although he was legally and professionally responsible for preventing the crimes, the commander of the 37th Motorized Brigade failed to do so. To date, no members or commanders of the units that took part in the commission of the war crimes in Cirez/Qirez, Staro Cikatovo/ Çikatovё e Vjetёr, Baks, Vrbovac/Vërboc, and Glogovac/Gllogoc, where no less than 200 civilians were killed in four weeks, have been prosecuted.
The Humanitarian Law Center announces the “Ljubiša Diković” File. The document contains facts relating to the actions of the former Commander of the 37th Motorized Brigade during the war, as well as ICTY exhibits pertaining to war crimes committed in the area of responsibility of the war commander Ljubiša Diković.
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The Trial Chamber of the Higher Court in Belgrade War Crimes Department presided by Judge Tatjana Vuković rendered a judgment on December 16th, 2011, after three years of trials, finding the accused Darko Janković aka Pufta and Goran Savić guilty and sentencing them to 15 years of imprisonment and 1 year and 6 months of imprisonment respectively, while the accused Saša Ćilerdžić was acquitted of charges. The Humanitarian Law Center believes that the Court has rendered a just sentence in the case of the accused Janković, which is adequate for the gravity of the crime committed. In this moment, while there is no access to the written reasoning of the judgment, it is unclear what were the reasons that led the Court into rendering the acquittal of Ćilerdžić and the minimum prison sentence in the case of the accused Savić.
