Ministry of Defence withholding information on active-duty members of Army of Serbia indicted of war crimes
On 18 July 2016, the Commissioner for Information of Public Importance and Personal Data Protection (Commissioner) sent a request to the Government of the Republic of Serbia to ensure the execution of his decision of May 2014, which ordered the Ministry of Defence (MoD) to provide the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) with information as to whether two officers of the Army of Serbia (VS) – Pavle Gavrilović and Rajko Kozlina – remained in active service after an indictment was raised against them for a war crime. The HLC believes that complying with the request of the Commissioner and ordering the MoD to communicate the information requested should be a priority for the Government, in order to make it clear that state authorities may not violate the public’s right to know the facts about past crimes and the role played by the state in these crimes, especially where people who are still in the public office have been involved in them.