Three years after the initial deadline, the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has finished reviewing remaining war crime cases.
The president of the court, Meddzida Kreso, said at a press conference on Thursday that the court had evaluated over 700 cases from all the prosecutor’s offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Around 100 cases that are considered less complex will be transferred to the entity prosecution offices and the Brcko District.
The entity prosecution offices consist of 10 cantonal prosecutions in the Federation and six district prosecutions in Republika Srpska.
Kreso explained that the distribution would enable more efficient war crimes processing, since it utilises “all resources of the Bosnian judiciary in order to prosecute as many cases as soon as possible”, and meet the deadlines of the State Strategy for Processing War Crimes.
According to this strategy, the prosecutor's offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina were obliged to submit data on unresolved cases in January 2009, but that happened three years later.
“After it was done in October last year, the Court finished reviewing 700 cases in two months and the decisions were made,” added Kreso.
The State Strategy for Processing War Crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina was adopted by the Council of Ministers in December 2008.
The strategy calls for the most complex and priority war crime cases to be finished within seven years and the rest within 15 years.
The most complex cases are to be prosecuted at the state level, while entity courts and prosecutor's offices will deal with the rest.