Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor of the Republic of Serbia Unprofessional, Incompetent, and Prone to Making Politically Motivated Decisions

On March 3, 2011, Austrian authorities arrested retired Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) Army general Jovan Divjak at the Vienna airport on an arrest warrant issued by the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor of the Republic of Serbia, identical to the one used in the arrest of Ejup Ganić.

This is the fourth time in a row that this institution initiates court proceedings which seriously undermine the confidence victims of war crimes and expert public have in the work of the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor. Ejup Ganić was acquitted of charges by a court in the United Kingdom, concluding that the Office of the War Crimes of the Republic of Serbia abused the British Court for staging a political process against Ganić. A British judge declared Milan Petrović, Deputy War Crimes Prosecutor, who represented the interests of the Republic of Serbia in this case to be an unreliable witness. However, it did not prompt the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor of the Republic of Serbia to re-evaluate some of the existing arrest warrants and withdraw those not based on solid evidence. Before the case of Ejup Ganić, another politically motivated indictment was raised against BiH citizen Ilija Jurišić in what appeared to be an attempt to protect the interests of the former Yugoslav National Army (JNA). The Appellate Court in Belgrade annulled the first-instance decision which was also politically motivated, but the expert public believed that the Appellate Court had overthrown that decision because of the pressure of European institutions and not because the Appellate Court justices were truly convinced that the indictment and the first-instance decision were based on misinterpreted facts.

In February 2011, acting on an indictment issued by the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor of the Republic of Serbia, BiH police arrested Croatian homeland defender Tihomir Purda when he attempted to enter the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina. The only evidence the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor of the Republic of Serbia publicly presented was a forced statement Purda gave while he was in detention in a camp in Serbia in the first half of 1992. Only after being exposed to a growing pressure from international institutions, the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor of the Republic of Serbia gave up further prosecution stating that recently obtained evidence proved that Purda and other two indicted Croatian homeland defenders were not guilty as initially charged.

The above mentioned cases clearly prove that the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor of the Republic of Serbia acted in an unprofessional and politically motivated manner which is having a negative impact on the prosecution of war crimes perpetrators in Serbia. The confidence of victims from the states in the region, international institutions, and transitional justice oriented non-governmental organizations in the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor of the Republic in Serbia enjoyed by has been seriously undermined.

The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) calls upon the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor of the Republic of Serbia to submit to the judiciary of BiH all evidence against Jovan Divjak and other indicted BiH citizens pertaining to the execution of members of the JNA in Dobrovoljačka Street in Sarajevo on May 2 and 3, 1992 and to stop initiating politically motivated trials while at the same time replacing Milošević-era prosecutors with young law professionals.