The OSCE Mission to Serbia presented its third multi-annual report on war crimes proceedings in Serbia, covering the period from 2020 to 2023, at a meeting held in Belgrade with representatives of judicial and executive authorities responsible for handling war crimes cases.
Participants included judges from the High Court and the Court of Appeals in Belgrade, prosecutors from the War Crimes Prosecutor’s Office, members of the Ministry of Interior’s Witness Protection Unit, and representatives of the High Judicial Council, the Ministry of Justice, the Bar Association of Serbia, as well as the Delegation of the European Union. All attendees had the opportunity to get acquainted with the OSCE Mission to Serbia's monitoring findings and analysis.
While opening the meeting, the Acting Head of the OSCE Mission to Serbia Carolina Hidea emphasized that the report was the result of an inclusive drafting process, involving consultations and discussions with all relevant institutions, whose comments were incorporated in the final text. Head of the OSCE trial monitoring team Relja Radosavljević presented an overview of the statistics on war crimes cases during the reporting period, and summarized the report’s main findings and recommendations.
The war crimes trial monitoring report builds on the OSCE’s previous reports, which covered the periods 2003-2014 and 2015-2019. The findings in the report remain consistent with past reports, and are structured around nine thematic areas: operational environment, international and regional co-operation, investigations, modes of liability, trial delays, application of international humanitarian law, sentencing practices, witness protection and victim support.
The report is available at www.osce.org/mission-to-serbia/594071 and was produced with the financial support of the European Union, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), and the Austrian Development Cooperation (ADC).