This post is also available in: српски (Serbian)

President of the Association “Monitor”, doc. Dr. Aleksandar R. Ivanovic held on 25. January 2014 year lecture at the University College Buskerud in Drammen (Norway) for students of specialist studies on the topic: “Detecting and Prosecuting War Criminals in the Western Balkans”.

The lecture was aimed at familiarizing students with the method of detecting and proving war crimes, as well as the specifics of the procedure for the detection and prosecution of war crimes perpetrators in the Western Balkans.

In the introductory part of the lecture, Professor Ivanovic introduced students with characteristics of war crimes through the prism of the act of execution, the active subject, the mental element and the form of guilt. In this regard, the professor pointed out that war crimes are the most violent violations of international humanitarian law, and that the most significant is the legal substance defining the war crimes contained in the provisions of the four Geneva Conventions that deal with grave violations. They consist of a wide range of criminal actions committed in all aspects that an armed conflict may have. While serious violations, as defined in the Geneva Conventions, mainly relate to crimes committed in the international armed conflict, the Protocol and the Statute of the International Criminal Court, extend the category of war crimes and crimes committed in national liberation wars and internal armed conflicts.

After acquaintance with students with the contents of the Geneva Conventions, additional protocols and the Statute of the International Criminal Court, Professor Ivanovic is in the second part of his lecture on the detection and prosecution of war crimes that took place in the territory of the former Yugoslavia. In this regard, he introduced students to the fact that the procedures for detecting and proving these crimes are being conducted by the authorities of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), as well as by the criminal justice authorities of the countries of the former Yugoslavia. In the further part of his lecture, Professor Ivanovic briefed students on the history of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), with the content of the statute of this tribunal, as well as the method of processing war crimes before this court. After that, Professor Ivanović presented to students the way in which war crimes cases were prosecuted before the domestic justice authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. With connection to this, he first introduced students with the fact the in the countries of former Yugoslavia were in the practice so called “court investigation”, and that a new Criminal Procedure Code, introduced in the countries of the former Yugoslavia sometime in 2000, introduced a criminal justice model with several elements of the adversarial system, which implies the abolition of the role of the investigating judge and the shifting of most of the responsibility for Detection, investigation, preparation and prosecution of prosecutors. He also emphasized that these legal changes for the first time introduced new legal institutes such as a plea agreement, as well as giving prosecutors the opportunity to grant immunity to those who have committed criminal offenses in exchange for their testimony.

In the further part of his lecture, Prof. Ivanovic introduced students with the structure of state organs who are responsible for handling procedures against war crimes perpetrators in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. He devoted special attention to the witness protection programs in the aforementioned countries, as well as to other newspapers such as: the ability to hear witnesses and victims through video conferencing or international criminal justice assistance, if it is not possible to secure their presence; The obligation to record the whole course of the trial and make transcripts of audio recordings from the trial; The possibility of using evidence collected or carried out by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in domestic war crimes proceedings against war crimes perpetrators.

The final part of the lecture was dedicated to the method of detection and proof of war crimes, with special emphasis on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. In this part of the lecture, professors Ivanovic introduced students with problems that the criminal justice authorities in these countries face when it comes to dealing with war crimes cases. In this regard, Professor Ivanovic pointed out that all problems, that is, the specifics of war crimes detection and proving in the Western Balkans can be divided into problems of formal (legal) and problems of practical nature. The main legal problems highlighted the problem of regional cooperation and the problem related to the implementation of the institute of command responsibility, while the following problem arises as practical problems in the process of detecting and prosecution and war crimes:

• the lack of political will to prosecute war crimes;
• the fact that most of the perpetrators of war crimes are or still belong to the structures that are supposed to carry out the detection and prosecution of war crimes;
• a large flow of time from the moment of execution to the moment of commencement of the investigation of war crimes;
• the war conditions in which the crimes were committed;
• deliberate destruction and removal of evidence of war crimes;
• the fact that the crimes occurred in territories that are actually outside the jurisdiction of the domestic judiciary;
• lack of material evidence and lack of personal evidence;
• the negative influence of the media;
• complexity as a result of the large number of victims and a large number of perpetrators and accomplices in specific cases of war crimes;
• the lack of evidence;
• problems related to intimidation of potential witnesses and the possibility of their protection,
• problems related to the testimonies of the injured parties.

In the final part of the course students are familiar with the procedure and methodology of detecting and proving the war crimes and with so-called “golden criminalistics questions”. At the end of his lecture Professor Ivanovic pointed out that the detection and prosecution of perpetrators of war crimes is job for several generation, and that in addition to creating a legal and material conditions for the efficient work of the criminal justice system in detecting and prosecuting perpetrators of these crimes it is necessary also adequate education of members of the police service and the criminal justice authorities.