NUŽDIĆ: ACCOUNTABILITY SYSTEM WITHIN BiH JUDICIARY SHOULD BE ESTABLISHED

BANJA LUKA, JULY 20 /SRNA/ - It is high time to establish a system of accountability within the judiciary of BiH, because those who for years were responsible for conducting investigations, issuing indictments, and prosecuting those responsible for war crimes against Serbs must be held accountable for their failure to act, said Viktor Nuždić, Acting Director of the Republic Centre for Research of War, War Crimes and the Search for Missing Persons.

Nuždić told SRNA that for a full 32 years, perpetrators of crimes against Serbs in Derventa and had lived as free people, without fear of justice and without any accountability for the atrocities they committed, while in the meantime dozens of victims and witnesses had died.

"For all these years, the Prosecutor's Office of BiH has evidently failed to take the necessary steps to identify, prosecute, and punish the perpetrators. Thirty-two years of inaction can no longer be justified by the complexity of the cases, lack of time, or any other excuses," Nuždić stressed.

If there had been genuine willingness to resolve these cases, Nuždić said, it is hard to believe that individuals suspected of war crimes could have lived undisturbed in the United States for decades.

"The particularly devastating fact is that these crimes are not unknown, nor was there a lack of evidence. Quite the opposite. The Ministry of the Interior of Republika Srpska has filed numerous criminal complaints," Nuždić stressed.

According to him, cases in which Serbs are the victims must finally be prosecuted, and prosecutors must show at least some of the determination and efficiency they have demonstrated in cases with a pronounced political dimension, including proceedings conducted against the highest-ranking officials of Republika Srpska.

"It is not enough merely to ask why the perpetrators have not been prosecuted. We must also ask who, through their failure to act, allowed justice to be delayed for more than three decades for crimes committed against Serbs," Nuždić told SRNA.

He pointed out that the Republic Centre for Research of War, War Crimes and the Search for Missing Persons possesses extensive documentation of crimes committed not only in Derventa, but throughout the Posavina region against the Serb civilian population.

He said that throughout all these years, including today, the Republic Centre for Research of War, War Crimes and the Search for Missing Persons has maintained constant communication and cooperation with the Alliance of Former Camp Inmates of Republika Srpska and the Derventa Association of Former Camp Inmates, both in connection with this case and numerous other war crimes cases.

"Knowing everything they have been through, I admire the strength of the camp detainees for speaking once again about the horrors they endured. The Centre has published several studies on these crimes, interviewed numerous witnesses and survivors, while the media have for years reported their harrowing testimonies," Nuždić recalled.

He said that some of these facts were also presented in the few court proceedings conducted before the judiciary of BiH concerning crimes committed against Serbs, stressing that no one can any longer claim there is a lack of evidence, because the problem has never been the evidence, but rather the lack of willingness to see justice carried out.

"Unfortunately, whether and how those responsible for these crimes will finally be prosecuted will once again depend, to a great extent, on the judicial institutions of BiH," Nuždić stressed.

Five American investigator-prosecutors arrived in Derventa today to take statements from eight former camp detainees about the horrors they endured in the notorious camp for Serbs at the Rabić military warehouse in 1992.

Drawing on previous experience, Nuždić says it is realistic to expect that the American investigative authorities will primarily seek to determine whether these individuals provided truthful information about their past when applying to enter and obtain the right to reside in the United States, rather than investigate their criminal responsibility for war crimes, but that we must not give up.

"We must not accept that those who killed, tortured and abused others are remembered as people who managed to escape justice simply because the institutions remained silent for years," Nuždić concluded.

During the Defensive-Patriotic War, before the Army of Republika Srpska had even been formed, Croatian and Muslim forces attacked the local Serb population in Derventa.

Camps for Serbs were established, the most notorious of which were those at the Army Hall and the Rabić site.

The Rabić camp, established in April 1992, held 120 Serb detainees, while several hundred Serb civilians passed through the camps in the Derventa area overall.