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Hague Pans Serbia over War Fugitive Search
30 May 2008 Belgrade _ The Hague’s top war crimes prosecutor says Serbia is not doing enough to arrest the remaining fugitives from the 1990s Balkans wars.
The chief United Nations war crimes prosecutor Serge Brammertz blamed Serbia for a series of political and organisational shortcomings which resulted with its failure to arrest remaining fugitives, including wartime Bosnian Serb former political and military leaders, Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic.
“The most critical area of cooperation remains the apprehension of fugitives.
The office strongly believes that remaining war crimes fugitives, namely Ratko Mladic, Radovan Karadzic, Stojan Zupljanin and Goran Hadzic are within the reach of the authorities in Serbia and that Serbia can locate them. In this area cooperation remains unsatisfactory,” Brammertz said in a report to the UN Security Council.
The 15-member body will review Brammertz’s report to the council, the first since he took over the office from Carla del Ponte, by mid-June, UN diplomats told Balkan Insight.
Serbia blasted the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia’s, ICTY, Chief Prosecutor on Tuesday, claiming “unnecessary bias” in his first report to the Security Council.
“We believe that Brammertz’s report has not been balanced in an adequate manner and in a way that reflects our previous cooperation with the Tribunal,” Chairman of Serbia’s National Council for Cooperation with the ICTY, Rasim Ljajic said.
Brammetz also said “the cooperation between principal Serbian agencies has been far from efficient, and that Belgrade lacks a concerted strategy and systematic investigative activities directed at locating and arresting the fugitives.”
“The Serbian Action Team has been working with diminished capacity due to the unstable political situation in Serbia,” the chief war crimes prosecutor said in a report obtained by the Balkan Insight
In his words, the only notable step in tracking fugitives was the action taken by the Serbian War Crimes Prosecution in the southern town of Nis in an operation aimed at apprehending Stojan Zupljanin.
Brammetz also complained of a lack of cooperation on behalf of the Serbian intelligence agency, BIA, claiming there was “no access” to the archives as “significant numbers of requested documents have not been provided notwithstanding specific formal request.”
“These documents are crucial for the upcoming case against Jovica Stanisic, a former chief of civilian intelligence agency and Franko Simatovic a commander of an operation unit of this agency,” Brammertz said.
The President of the Hague-based war crimes tribunal, Fausto Pocar, underlined that a lack of full support from the international community for the work of the ICTY is evident in the continuing failure of the international community to secure the arrest and transfer of the four high-level remaining fugitives.
“The inability to bring these fugitives to international justice signals a failing commitment on the part of the international community to the principle that there should be no impunity for international crimes,” Pocar said.
“Without the arrest and trial of these remaining fugitives, the ICTY’s key objective to bring justice, peace, reconciliation to the region of former Yugoslavia will be seriously undermined. The ICTY must not close its doors until these fugitives are arrested and tried,” Pocar said.
Serbia’s cooperation with The Hague Tribunal is necessary if it is to reap the full benefits of a key pre-membership deal signed with the European Union last month.
