Legal Analysis of the Directive and the Regulations on Access to Information by the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Year: 2012
Type: preprint
Abstract: In July 1995, in his position as a President of Republika and a supreme commander of the army and police, and as a part of the organized criminal enterprise together with S.M and others in their positions as commanders and chief officers of the army and police of Republic, the accussed R.K. has incited, ordered and executed acts of genocide in municipality S, resulting in death of roughly 8,000 persons: E.K., A.B, etc.This is how, once the latest directive and regulations on anonymization of court verdicts of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina (Court of BiH) becomes operational, hypothetical judgment against Radovan Karadžic for commiting genocide in Srebrenica as a president and the supreme commander of Republika Srpska army and police while acting as a part of organized criminal enterprise together with Slobodan Milosevic and others in their positions as heads of the army and police of Republic of Serbia, would look alike. None reading the above hypothetical verdict would be able to decypher where exactly this genocide took place and which institutions were envolved, and the victims would be finally erased from the the general public and historical memory. In this short legal analysis, the argument is made that the Directive and the Regulations if applied in cases of war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide would, at the very least, violate a number of international legal provisions. Firstly, the application would violate Article 10 (freedom of expression) of the European Convention on Human Rights. Secondly, the Directive and the Regulations violate a number of international conventionsm but in particular Article 2 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), which guarantess effective remedy for victims of crimes. Finally, the Directives and the Regulations defeat the whole purpose of the existence of the Court of Bosnia nad Herzegovina as partially a war crimes court charged by the International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) to prosecute war crimes commited on the territory of Bosnia and Herzegovina with an aim of revealing the truth about the conflict, preventing future perpatration of similar crimes, providing a remedy for victims and contributing towards reconciliation in the region.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Author: Asim Jusić
Language: English
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1622189015