Relatives of people killed in the village of Trnje in 1999 they would not participate in the murder trial of two Serbian officers because Kosovo lawyers representing them have been barred.
Gordana Andric
BIRN
Belgrade
Kosovo’s Humanitarian Law Centre said on Tuesday that the families would not take part in the trial in Belgrade of former Yugoslav Army officers Pavle Gavrilovic and Ranko Kozlin, who are charged with killing at least 27 women, children and elderly people in Trnje in 1999.
The families are staging the boycott because judge Mirjana Ilic, the head of the Serbian Special Court’s war crimes office, has barred their lawyers because they are registered with the bar association in Kosovo, which Serbia does not recognise.
“Kosovo lawyers have so far represented victims without any issues, and the Humanitarian Law Centre believes that [judge Ilic’s] decision was not based on legal grounds,” said the Centre in a letter sent to the judge and to media.
According to the law, only members of Serbia’s bar association can work in courts in the country. But until recently, both Kosovo and Serbian lawyers acted in courts in both countries, and their membership of either of the bar associations was not questioned.
It is believed that the Serbian court’s move was made in retaliation for the decision by the EU rule-of-law mission in Kosovo to deny a Serbian lawyer the right to represent Kosovo Serb leader Oliver Ivanovic, who is charged with war crimes.
Preliminary hearings in the Trnje case started in February this year, but the trial has run into several other problems, with defendants sometimes not turning up for hearings, claiming that they were ill or that they were not properly informed that they had to attend.
