Public’s Right to Know of War Crimes Trials in Serbia

The report by the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) analyzes how are the existing mechanisms for public access to trials for war crimes applied and recommends necessary changes in the legislative framework and practice.  

The public’s right to know about the war crimes trials, as a minimum, includes the right to access the courtroom where trials are held and documentation of war crimes cases (indictments, judgements, transcripts and audio/video records of main hearings); the right to record a trial for the purpose of public presentation and the right to keep court records from war crimes cases. Out of the stated rights, only the right to access the courtroom and monitor the trial is strictly adhered to in Serbia and, therefore, it is not specifically analyzed in the Report. The public’s right to access relevant documents from war crimes trials is limited in practice by the refusal of courts to deliver judgments from proceedings that are not final and by excessive anonymisation of data.  

The report is based on several years of practice of the HLC, that monitors national war crimes trials from the start, obtains relevant court documents and reports about them to the public.

The report “Public’s Right to Know of War Crimes Trials in Serbia” is available here.