Bosnia and Herzegovina gets own war crimes court to help UN tribunal

Bosnia and Herzegovina today launched its own War Crimes Chamber to help with the work of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) as the court attempts to meet its 2008 deadline for trying the last of the cases stemming from the ethnic violence of the 1990s.

The court in the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo grew from a joint initiative of the Office of the High Representative for the Implementation of the 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement and the ICTY and was endorsed more than once by the UN Security Council.

Calling it a "milestone achievement" helping to solidify the national rule of law, ICTY President Theodor Meron said at the opening ceremony that the creation of the chamber was yet more evidence of the international community's commitment to securing justice in the country, with justice and accountability being vital components of post-war reconciliation and reconstruction.

"Through various training programmes, transfer of documents and expertise, the Tribunal will continue to work closely with the War Crimes Chamber," he said.

"Between ourselves and trials in the courts of former Yugoslavia, we must work to ensure that no major war criminals will benefit from a gap of impunity, either now or as our work at The Hague draws to an end," Mr. Meron added.

He re-affirmed that the Tribunal would not wind down before trying leading combatants Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and Ante Gotovina.

The ICTY's referral bench was considering requests from Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte for the transfer of cases to the War Crimes Chamber under rules examining the "whole panoply of due process in the receiving court," Mr. Meron said.

It was the first time since the Nuremberg and Tokyo tribunals that authority to prosecute war criminals was being transferred to a national jurisdiction, Ms. Del Ponte noted in her message.

Domestic war crimes prosecutions "must be victims-oriented, victims-driven and not be seen as a process for the sake of the process, justice for the sake of justice," she said.

They must be apolitical or depoliticized and "must fight against deeply embedded prejudices, public misconceptions, unsettled grievances and probably political interference," whose destruction requires enormous effort and crystal-clear fairness, she added.