Balkan Legal News

The following media round up on international, legal and foreign policy issues from around the Balkans for the period from 14 January to 20 January 2022.

Guernica 37 will provide weekly media updates with a focus on Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Serbia . Should you wish to contribute or submit a media summary, opinion piece or blog, please send to Ned Vucijak at nenadv@guernica37.com for consideration.

Bosnia and Herzegovina – 14 January 2022

The Bosnian state court has rejected for a second time the prosecution’s indictment of Milenko Stanic, who was the wartime president of the Serb-led Crisis Committee in Vlasenica in eastern Bosnia and later head of the wartime presidency of the municipality. The indictment was initially filed in November and then rejected by the state court the following month. It was then refiled in December and rejected again by the court the same month. The full article can be found here.

Bosnia and Herzegovina – 14 January 2022

The Bosnian state prosecution has made a decision not to investigate five individuals, who were accused of conducting artillery attacks on the city of Tuzla between 1992 and 1995. The prosecution explained that none of the 150 witnesses questioned was able to make a causal link between any of the five men and the attacks. The full article can be found here.

Serbia – 16 January 2022

Serbian citizens voted to change the country’s constitution and accept a judicial reform package, with 60.48 per cent of voters voting in favour. Some of the changes in the referendum are about the way judges and prosecutors will be elected in future. Parliament will now elect only the Supreme State Prosecutor and five out of 15 Constitutional Court judges. All other judges and prosecutors will be elected by two judicial councils. The full article can be found here.

Bosnia and Herzegovina – 17 January 2022

The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in a first-instance verdict acquitted Sena Hamzabegovic of financing terrorist activities by raising cash and taking it to help ISIL fighters in Syria and Iraq. The full article can be found here.

Bosnia and Herzegovina – 19 January 2022

The Bosnian state court handed down a first-instance verdict sentencing Sabahudin ‘Sasa’ Kajdic, a former member of the Third Company of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Prijedor Motorised Brigade, to 12 years in prison for committed crimes against humanity in Prijedor in 1992. The full article can be found here.

Serbia – 20 January 2022

For several weekends, thousands of demonstrators in Belgrade and other Serbian towns have blocked main roads and bridges to protest the planned mine in western Serbia. Serbia’s populist government has decided to cancel all licenses for mining giant Rio Tinto to open a lithium mine near the town of Loznica, in the west of the country, to defuse the large protests by environmentalists. The full article can be found here.

Kosovo – 20 January 2022

War victims hope they will be able to win compensation after verdicts are delivered at the Kosovo Specialist Chambers in The Hague – but experts have warned that the process could prove difficult if they want to remain anonymous. The full article can be found here.

Croatia – 20 January 2022

The European Court of Human Rights announced that it has rejected Vladimir Milankovic’s complaint about the verdict convicting him of ordering illegal arrests and not punishing the detention and abuse of Serb civilians, which resulted in more than 20 deaths. The full article can be found here.