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Regional cooperation between prosecutors’ offices in former Yugoslav countries is beset by problems, despite the protocols that states have signed agreeing to collaborate on war crimes cases, said speakers at a conference organised by the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network in Sarajevo on Wednesday.

“The cooperation exists in theory, but it is non-existent in practice,” Aleksandar Kontic, legal officer at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, told the conference entitled ‘After the ICTY: Regional Cooperation, Accountability, Truth and Justice in the Former Yugoslavia’.

Kontic said that the chief prosecutor at the Hague court, Serge Brammertz, has reported countries in the region to UN Security Council on several occasions due to their non-cooperation on war crime cases.

He also suggested that part of the problem was that all countries in the region still divide suspects into two categories – “our heroes and their criminals”.

The acting chief prosecutor at the Bosnian state prosecution, Gordana Tadic, said her institution wants to improve regional cooperation because some of the suspects being sought for prosecution in Bosnia and Herzegovina are living in Serbia and Croatia.

“It is important for war crime perpetrators not to remain unpunished no matter where they are,” Tadic said.

In 2013, the prosecutor’s offices of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia signed protocols enabling the free exchange of war crime cases, investigations and case documents. Despite the fact that several cases have been exchanged and processed, very few against high-ranking suspects have been successfully transferred to neighbouring countries’ jurisdictions, while numerous suspects have never been arrested or had cases brought against them.

Jurica Ilic of the County Prosecution in Zagreb pointed out that Croatia has certain legal differences that complicate cooperation with other former Yugoslav states.

“There is a problem related to existence of different standards in individual countries, which makes it impossible to take over complete cases,” Ilic said.

Croatian law does not recognise the concept of a ‘joint criminal enterprise’, and the Croatian government has ordered the country’s Justice Ministry, when reviewing cooperation requests from Bosnia, to refuse to act on any which “violate state interests” – meaning those in which Croatia is named as a participant in a joint criminal enterprise during the Bosnian conflict.

Paul Flynn, prosecution manager at the EU’s rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, EULEX, said meanwhile that cooperation between Pristina and Belgrade on war crimes cases was almost non-existent.

“Without that, I think we shall have no justice at all,” Flynn warned.

Merita Gashi, an adviser to the Kosovo chief state prosecutor, said that Pristina and Belgrade have no legal cooperation at all because of Serbia’s refusal to recognise Kosovo’s independence.

“There are around 13,000 victims of the military conflict in Kosovo. Victims are tired of waiting. They are beginning to lose confidence,” Gashi said.

Ivan Jovanovic, an expert in international law, told the conference that former Yugoslav countries had to accelerate cooperation because as the years pass, suspects, victims and witnesses are all getting older.

“We are witnessing that victims are dying and many suspects are dying,” Jovanovic warned.

The conference continues on Thursday.

Read more:

Poor Cooperation Leaves Balkan War Crime Suspects at Large

Srebrenica Suspects Find Safe Haven in Serbia

Serbia-Kosovo Stalemate Allows Fugitives to Stay Free

The conference, organised under the umbrella of BIRN’s Transitional Justice Initiative, will discuss regional cooperation in war crimes prosecution and missing persons, victims’ participation, and the role of archives, art, media and museums in dealing with the past.

Participants from civil society, the expert community, institutions, academia and the media will try to answer the overarching questions – how far we are from reconciliation, and what more we could do to combat impunity and increase intercultural dialogue?

The conference aims to have a results-oriented approach that will be reflected in a policy paper that will be used to further influence policies on both the national and EU levels with the goal of making transitional justice one of the key areas within the framework of EU negotiations.

The working languages of the conference are English, Albanian and BCS. Simultaneous translation will be provided during the whole event.

For more information about the conference, click here.

The meetings are being held as a part of BIRN’s Balkan Transitional Justice programme, bringing together representatives of war victims’ associations and the courts, as well as NGO members, humanitarian law experts and representatives of international organisations.

At the meeting in Belgrade, the participants raised various issues concerning regional cooperation in prosecuting war crimes committed during the 1990s conflicts, such as trials of defendants in their absence, the lack of cooperation between countries’ prosecutor’s offices and the lack of political will for states to fully cooperate.

As well as raising their concerns about such problems, the participants suggested possible solutions.

This input, along with input from the meetings in Zagreb and Sarajevo and the upcoming one in Pristina in September, will be formulated into recommendations.

After all four meetings with stakeholders, one final conference will be held at the regional level in Sarajevo on October 3-4.

The recommendations from the stakeholders’ meetings and the conference will be used to create a policy paper for improving regional cooperation between states in prosecuting war crimes.

The conference brought together over hundred journalists and media professionals to discuss professional standards related to reporting on terrorism and violent extremism.

As Bruce G. Berton the head of the OSCE mission in the country noted, while news about these topics draws a lot of attention and outlets are expected to publish or air it as quickly as possible, it is up to media to avoid sensationalism in the process.

The age of social media had put even greater importance on reporting professionally and responsibly on violent extremism and terrorism.

Unnamed and non-credible sources are one of the dangers for spreading propaganda.

Adhering to ethical standards such as truthfulness, independence, objectivity, empathy and responsibility are key principles in reliable reporting about terrorism and terrorist attacks, said Aidan White, president of the Ethical Journalism Network.

Marija Ristic, BIRN’s Regional Director, who spoke about reporting on violent extremism in Serbia, stressed that media often respond to the dominant narrative in society.

Reporting on the topic in Serbia is overly tabloid with sensationalistic content, almost no sources, and often alarmist in tone, emphasising Islamic radicalization, Ristic said.

But Serbian media takes a completely different tone when reporting on Serb fighters serving with pro-Russian forces in Ukraine, when its dominant narrative is one of “support for our Russian brothers” and a “justified struggle”, she added.

As BIRN’s summer school continued on Wednesday, lead trainer and Reuters investigative projects editor Blake Morrison held a session on the “art of interviewing” and on how to convince difficult sources to talk, describing interviews as a crucial component of the journalistic job.

“Think of any story as a blind date,” he told participants.

Morrison stressed the need for preparation and gave insight into why some people agree to give an interview – vanity, the need to be understood, self-interest, desperation, guilt and curiosity.

Susanne Reber, co-founder of Reveal podcast and Podcasting Executive Producer for E.W. Scripps National, introduced participants to the art of podcasting and of making stories heard.

BIRN investigations editor Lawrence Marzouk spoke of how to research the arms trade, using open source data.

The financial investigations workshop continued with OCCRP’s Miranda Patrucic explaining the Paradise Papers and how investigative journalists can find leads and data in the leaks.

The geolocation and digital investigations workshop also continued on Wednesday, with Bellingcat’s Christiaan Triebert’s lecturing on how to verify if a photo or a video was taken in a certain location at a given time.

Lead trainer Morrison held a second practical individual session with journalists.

The ninth BIRN Summer School has brought together young journalists from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, the UK, and the United States. For the first time, the Summer School has welcomed journalists from Moldova and Ukraine.

The Summer School is organised in cooperation with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad Adenauer- Stiftung, Open Society Foundations, the Austrian Development Agency (ADA), the operational unit of Austrian Development Cooperation, with support from the European Union.

Blake Morrison, investigative projects editor at Reuters, introduced participants at the BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting to fact-checking strategies and conducted a hands-on exercise exploring the differences between supposition and proof.

Miranda Patrucic, editor with the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, explained how to interpret and get the most from financial reports and documents.

In the afternoon, New York Times senior video editor Christoph Koettl looked at how to analyse content and metadata in photos and videos.

Bellingcat’s Christiaan Triebert introduced participants to open-source investigation and verification looking at how the organisation investigated the downing of the passenger plane MH17 over Ukraine and the 2016 failed coup in Turkey.

The ninth BIRN Summer School has brought together young journalists from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, the UK, and the United States.

For the first time, the Summer School has welcomed journalists from Moldova and Ukraine.

The Summer School is organised in cooperation with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad Adenauer- Stiftung, Open Society Foundations, the Austrian Development Agency (ADA), the operational unit of Austrian Development Cooperation, with support from the European Union.

Reporters from the Balkan region and across the world gathered on Monday in the mountain resort of Poiana Brasov, Romania, for the ninth BIRN Summer School of Investigative Reporting.

After greeting participants, Blake Morrison, the school’s lead trainer and investigative projects editor at Reuters, held a lecture and discussion about how to imagine a complex investigative story, as well as how to push for accountability.

Christoph Koettl, senior video journalist at The New York Times, specializing in geospatial and open-source research, also held an introductory session on using digital research and verification in investigative research.

He continued with a lecture on geospatial and satellite imagery used in investigative journalism, followed by an interactive exercise.

In the afternoon, the participants discussed story ideas and were divided up into smaller groups for in-depth sessions with Reuters’ editor Morrison.

The ninth BIRN Summer School has brought together young journalists from Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Kosovo, Macedonia, Moldova, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, the UK, and the United States.

For the first time, the Summer School welcomed journalists from Moldova and Ukraine.

The Summer School is organized in cooperation with the Media Program South East Europe of the Konrad Adenauer- Stiftung, Open Society Foundations, the Austrian Development Agency (ADA), the operational unit of Austrian Development Cooperation, with support from the European Union.