LOCAL PRESS

Ivanovic remains in custody (Tanjug)

Detention for the leader of the SDP civic initiative Oliver Ivanovic has been extended until 6 October, his wife Milena Popovic Ivanovic said. She told Tanjug that the EULEX Trial Chamber at the Basic Court in Kosovska Mitrovica extended detention and rejected as groundless the request for Ivanovic to be released pending trial. “This decision by EULEX is scandalous, I didn’t expect them to extend detention for my husband again, since none of the 45 witnesses had directly accused him of the crimes he was charged with,” she said. EULEX released yesterday Nebojsa Vujic and Aleksandar Lazovic pending trial.

Belgrade and Pristina agree on vehicle insurance memorandum (Tanjug/Beta)

The Belgrade and Pristina delegation agreed in Brussels to start the implementation of the memorandum on vehicle insurance on 12 August, the Office for Kosovo and Metohija announced. The Head of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Djuric, who led the Serbian delegation, said that the Serbian government managed to ensure that citizens in Kosovo and Metohija are exempt from paying vehicle insurance at administrative crossings between Kosovo and Serbia proper. “This seemingly small step in the process is actually of great importance for all citizens of the province who will be able to travel less expensively and with more dignity. Citizens will be able to cross the administrative line with Kosovo and Metohija in both directions without paying vehicle insurance changes, but also without frustration over several kilometer long lines at administrative crossings,” Djuric said. According to him, the agreement reached on Wednesday should serve as a model for a future practice in dialogue between Belgrade and Pristina, because it transpired that a mutually acceptable solution can be found when there is good faith on both sides, and when there are no attempts at political abuse and no ignoring of the principle of the status-neutrality of the dialogue. 

Djuric: Serbia will know how to protect Trepca (RTS)

The Head of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Djuric has stated that Serbia will know how to protect the Trepca Mining – Metallurgical – Chemical plant, its property and people in Kosovo. “Rest assured that Serbia is always with you,” Djuric said in his message to the miners in Kosovo, Trepca employees and leadership and all miners in other parts of Serbia, congratulating the Miners’ Day. “The tough and hard work you do is the pride of all our citizens. That is why our permanent task is to ensure you best possible and safer working conditions and enable you to be adequately awarded for your work,” said Djuric.

REGIONAL PRESS

B&H Council of Ministers dismissed Zubac (klix.ba)

Goran Zubac was dismissed yesterday at an extraordinary session of the B&H Council of Ministers from the post of the director of the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA), the Council of Ministers said in a statement. It further states that, in line with the Law on SIPA, deputy director Djuro Knezevic will perform the duties and responsibilities of the director until a new director of this police agency is appointed. “The B&H Council of Ministers requests the Independent Committee of the B&H Parliamentary Assembly to launch without delay the procedure for the appointment of the new SIPA director, and submit the list with proposed candidates to the B&H Security Minister for further procedure so the procedure of appointing a new director could be completed within 60 days at the latest,” reads the statement. The appellate Chamber of the B&H Court sentenced Zubac to a one-year suspended sentence, based on the first-instance verdict that found Zubac guilty of having acted negligently in service. The verdict states that Zubac didn’t engage the SIPA special unit during the 2014 February protests in Sarajevo in front of the B&H Presidency building.

SDA – HDZ coalition again without majority? (Nezavisne)

The SDA and its partners have not ensured a majority in the House of Representatives and the House of Peoples in the FB&H parliament, where they have the support of 49 delegates in the House of Representatives and 24 in the House of Peoples of the necessary 50 in the first and 28 in the latter, Nezavisne was told by Emir Suljagic, member of the DF Presidency, which left the SDA coalition. Obviously, this process of forming a new parliamentary majority will be very difficult, which may be of great concern since the FB&H government was first blocked for weeks, and now it is hardly working in an incomplete composition, while the crisis is slowly being transferred to the legislative power of the Federation. Suljagic says their vice-president of the FB&H Milan Dunovic will give consent for the formation of a new government only if they submit at least 50 names, i.e. 28 names of delegates with their signatures. Analysts opine that the Nasa Stranka (NS) could play the key role in this parliamentary majority seesaw. The NS is a pure left-wing party in ideology, but also a party that fiercely opposed the DF by supporting the new labor law, which the SDA and HDZ hardly pushed through the parliament. Still, the NS leader Pedja Kojovic is explicit. “No, we are not part of the new majority nor have we ever conducted such talks, because our stand hasn’t changed,” says Kojovic. “If the SDA and HDZ would be asked, they would never have pushed the labor law that inflicted them great damage. However, over the difficult economic situation and financial insolvency, the pressure of the international community was such that they had to adopt the law. Our support to the law, which is better than the old one, has nothing to do with our relation towards national parties that hasn’t changed,” concludes Kojovic.

Government crisis in Brcko (Nezavisne)

The parliament majority in Brcko continued yesterday negotiations behind closed doors in order to overcome the impasse of the local parliament, which came about after the attempt of the Bosniak MPs to include the resolution on Srebrenica on the agenda. Government member of the Brcko District from the SNSD Sinisa Milic told the press that it is evident there is a crisis in the functioning of the executive authority in the district. “If we are not capable of resolving this, one of the possibilities is for the government to enter a technical mandate and form a new majority,” opines Milic. According to the government member of the Brcko District from the SBB Ismet Dedeic, in order to resolve the current situation it will be necessary to reach agreement on important economic issues such as the industrial zone and the situation after more than 20 million BAM from the budget finds in the Bobar Bank remain blocked. Representatives of Serb political parties didn’t agree to the earlier request of the Bosniaks to build a new mosque in downtown Brcko.

Izetbegovic: Labor law part of reform agenda (Fena)

Member of the B&H Presidency and the SDA leader Bakir Izetbegovic told Fena about his views on implementation of the new labor law. “B&H is the only European country which still has not adopted that law, which means a much more flexible position for employers, because it will enable them to hire people more and faster. On the other hand, there is a great pressure when it comes to lawsuits based on collective contracts, which brings millions of BAM of pressure on the budget and which is increasing every month by fifty million and we need to stop that. That means we are stopping the pressure on the budget which could lead to no pensions, no disability allowances, no money for a lot of things and those two things would solved,” said Izetbegovic. He finds that this law is not perfect and he is sorry that the agreement was not reached with the Union, but talks will continue, because agreements will be offered that will amend and revise the law. “This law is part of the reform agenda and it is maybe the most painful and most demanding law within the agenda, it was brave to adopt it and I am certain everyone will eventually realize we did the right thing,” said Izetbegovic.

Police operation against IS members (Republika)

Nine persons have been arrested and another 27 are looked for in an anti-terrorist operation in several Macedonian cities for the arrest of Islamic State (IS) members. “The operation is aimed at detaining individuals who are suspected of taking part in paramilitary formations in Syria and other regions engulfed by armed conflict, as well as individuals recruiting Macedonian nationals to take part in Syria fighting”, the spokesman of the Macedonian Interior Ministry Ivo Kotevski said. The operation is carried out through searches by special police units in Skopje, Struga, Kumanovo, Tetovo, Gostivar. Unofficially, of the 27 persons that the police are looking, 20 are on the battlefields in Syria. Among those arrested is the imam of the Tutunsuz mosque and Jajapshinata mosque, Rexhep Memishi.

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

Kosovo’s New War Court: How Will it Work? (BIRN, by Marija Ristic, 6 August 2015)

After MPs in Pristina voted to set up a new court to try Kosovo Liberation Army ex-guerrillas, BIRN examines how it will operate, who it can prosecute and for which offences.

The 50-page Law on Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office, which was negotiated between the EU and Kosovo, was finally passed this week by the Kosovo parliament after months of bitter arguments, street protests, frenzied media speculation and delays caused by political opposition to the legislation that will see former KLA guerrillas – who are seen as heroes of the liberation struggle in Kosovo – put on trial. The establishment of the so-called ‘specialist chambers’ comes after the EU’s Special Investigative Task Force in July last year published the findings of its three-year investigation into the allegations initially made by Council of Europe rapporteur Dick Marty, who claimed that crimes against civilians such as kidnapping, torture and organ-harvesting were committed by KLA members during the Kosovo conflict. The EU task force said it conducted the most comprehensive investigation so far of crimes perpetrated by KLA, explaining that as a result it will be in the position to indict high-level perpetrators when the new court starts operating. Since then the EU and US have been pushing the Kosovo government to ensure that the necessary constitutional amendments and laws go onto the statute books. They believe the court is needed because the Kosovo judiciary would be unable or unwilling to properly prosecute high-ranking former KLA figures, and the EU’s rule-of-law mission, EULEX, does not have the capacity to do so. The first vote in the Kosovo parliament failed last month due to lack of support among MPs, but after further pressure, including the threat that the UN Security Council could set its own court to try former KLA fighters, they were finally approved on Monday. The court, which is expected to be fully functional in the course of six months to a year, will address allegations that KLA fighters were involved in the killings, abductions, illegal detentions and persecution of Serbs, Roma and Kosovo Albanians believed to be collaborators with the Serbian regime or political opponents of the KLA leadership during and after the 1998-99 conflict.

Detentions and organ-harvesting

The new Law on Specialist Chambers and Specialist Prosecutor’s Office establishes and regulates the organization, functions and jurisdiction of the new court. According to the legislation, which BIRN has seen, the ‘specialist chambers’ will be independent from Kosovo judiciary, but will be part of Kosovo’s justice system. The law says that “specialist chambers shall be attached to each level of the court system in Kosovo: the Basic Court of Pristina, the Court of Appeals, the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court”. The chambers will have primacy over all other courts in Kosovo. The court will be located in Kosovo but also in a so-called ‘host state’. The EU has already asked Netherlands to be the host state for the court and it is expected that Kosovo and the Netherlands would soon sign an agreement which will regulate the functioning of the court. According to the law, “the court may sit elsewhere on an exceptional basis if necessary”. The specialist chambers will have jurisdiction over crimes that occurred between January 1, 1998 until December 31, 2000, and that either were committed or commenced in Kosovo, meaning it can also prosecute crimes committed in Albania, as many of the prisoners who were taken away by KLA were later detained in camps in north Albania. The chambers will be able to prosecute crimes against humanity, including murder, extermination, enslavement, deportation, imprisonment, torture, rape, enforced disappearance and other persecution on political, racial, ethnic or religious grounds. It will also prosecute war crimes and other violations – including the destruction of civilians’ property, towns, villages and religious buildings. In Article 14 of the legislation, it specifically states that it can also prosecute a crime it describes as “subjecting persons who are in the power of an adverse party to physical mutilation or to medical or scientific experiments of any kind which are neither justified by medical, dental or hospital treatment”. This provision has been specially added to address potential cases of alleged organ-harvesting, after the EU task force concluded that there was evidence that this happened, but only on a very limited scale. “A small number of individuals were killed for the purpose of extracting and trafficking their organs,” the task force report said. It also cautioned however that investigators “encountered significant challenges in obtaining such evidence”, and suggested that it would be difficult to raise indictments for alleged organ-trafficking. The new court is widely seen in Kosovo as an insult to the Kosovo Liberation Army as a whole, and to its war for freedom from repressive Serbian rule, but the law says it will deal only with individual criminal responsibility. Many believe that top Kosovo politicians will end up in the dock, including Foreign Minister Hashim Thaci, who is the former political chief of the KLA. The Council of Europe report levelled serious allegations of criminality against Thaci, which he strongly denied. But the law makes it clear that no official is out of bounds for prosecution by the new court. “The official position of any accused person, including the head of state or government or a responsible government official, shall not relieve such person of criminal responsibility nor mitigate punishment,” it says.

International judges, EU funding

The specialist chambers will consist of the two main institutions – the chamber and the registry. The chamber will include a basic court chamber, court of appeals chamber, supreme court chamber and constitutional court chamber. All judging panels at all court levels will be composed of three international judges. The registry will include a defence office, victims’ participation office (which will represent victims’ interests), witness protection and support office, detention management unit and ombudsman’s office. The official languages of the court will be Albanian, Serbian and English. The specialist prosecution office will be independent and it is expected that the lead prosecutor of the EU’s Special Investigative Task Force, David Schwendiman, will take over once the office is established. His will have a four-year mandate with a possible extension. The prosecution will also have police with the authority and responsibility to any exercise powers given to Kosovo police. The prosecution can, in exceptional cases, use evidence provided by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the Kosovo courts. The status, privileges and immunities of those who work for the new court will be the same as the ones already enjoyed by the EU rule-of-law mission in Kosovo, EULEX. The court’s costs will not be paid by Kosovo, and are expected to be funded by the EU. The annual budget is not mentioned in the legislation. The court’s archive and documents will be held in a dedicated depository outside Kosovo. When it comes to detention, police will have 48 hours from the arrest to bring the suspect to the judge who will decide on dentition. The detention facilities of the court will be in the ‘host state’ – the Netherlands. There will be also a possibility of bail with release and house detention and prohibition of approaching specific places. The maximum sentence the chambers will be able to impose is life imprisonment. Defendants can appeal against the initial verdict, but will not have a new trial. According to the law, the so called court of appeals panel “may affirm, reverse or revise judgement” of the trial panel. The law also envisages third-instance appeals proceedings. Defendants who are found guilty will serve their sentence in prisons in states willing to accept them. The same model has already been used by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, but the new court has yet to sign agreements with countries that might be interested, although is expected that these will all be within the EU.

Operation Storm Anniversary Shows Bosnia’s Ethnic Divisions (BIRN, by Katarina Panic, Srecko Latal, 5 August 2015)

Politicians from different ethnic groups either celebrated Croatia’s victory during Operation Storm or mourned the Serb victims, highlighting divisions that still paralyse the country 20 years on. The president of Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity of Republika Srpska, Milorad Dodik, stood solemnly next to Serbian Premier Aleksandar Vucic on a bridge over the River Sava near Sremska Raca on Tuesday evening as the two Serb officials symbolically threw wreaths into the Sava river to mourn the victims of the 20th anniversary of the Croatian military’s Operation Storm. “This bridge represented everything back in those days: freedom, truth, peace, and a safe escape from death,” Dodik said during the ceremony which commemorated more than 200,000 Serbs who fled Croatia because of the military operation in August 1995 and more than 600 mostly elderly people who stayed behind and were killed. The same evening, some 320 kilometres to the west, Bosnia’s defence minister Marina Pendes and the chief of staff of the Armed Forces of Bosnia and Herzegovina, General Ante Jelec, joined Croatian dignitaries at a showpiece military parade in Zagreb to celebrate victory in the same Operation Storm. Speaking to local media before going to Zagreb, Pendes said that Storm was a legitimate military operation: “Croatian territory needed to be liberated so that [Croat] refugees could return to their homes, and the [Croatian] state could get every inch of its territory back under its sovereignty,” she said. But her deputy, a Serb called Boris Jerinic, told media that Bosnian officials’ participation in the military parade in Zagreb, without official approval from Bosnia’s presidency or government, was a worrying precedent. Jerinic said that the anniversary was not a cause for celebration but “a day of mourning because of the biggest exodus [of refugees] since World War II”. These conflicting opinions, similar to the heightened ethnic and political tensions which have surrounded the recent 20th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide, reflect the persistent divisions between Bosniaks, Croats and Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina which are exacerbated by rival views of wartime events. “It is the reality of our region that we have at least three different views on such events and someone who is a criminal for somebody is always a hero for someone else,” the Croat chairman of Bosnia’s tripartite presidency, Dragan Covic, told local media. He added that he did not attend the parade in Zagreb because he was not invited. Many Serbs who fled Croatia during the war finally found refuge in Republika Srpska. In the north-western Prijedor area alone, there are 700 Serb families from Croatia. Some Republika Srpska municipalities even organised free transportation for those who wanted to attend the commemoration on the River Sava at Sremska Raca. One bus was waiting at Prijedor bus station at noon on Tuesday, but was eventually cancelled because only eight people appeared, including only one Serb from Croatia. Biljana Lukic, a Serb from the Croatian port town of Sibenik who now lives in Prijedor, said she did not even consider attending the ceremony at Sremska Raca, although during the war many members of her family fled from Croatia to Republika Srpska and to Serbia, where they still live today. Lukic, like many others, believe that across the region politicians organise parades and commemorations to commemorate key historic events for populist reasons, but have effectively abandoned or forgotten ordinary people and their genuine, everyday needs. “People have given up on politicians. People have lost their faith in politicians. People are completely disappointed and don’t care about anything,” Lukic told BIRN. “It is good not to be forgotten, but it is too late now. I have to say that this [ceremony at Sremska Raca] is a little bit silly and ridiculous – a tragicomedy,” she said.

Macedonian police arrest 9 suspected IS fighter, seek 27 (AP, 6 August 2015)

SKOPJE, Macedonia — Police in Macedonia say they have arrested nine people on suspicion of being members of the Islamic State group and are looking for a further 27 suspects, following raids in the capital, Skopje, and several towns in the northeast of the country. Interior ministry spokesman Ivo Kotevski told The Associated Press Thursday that all those arrested are Macedonian nationals. They are suspected of being volunteers or recruiters for the group to fight in Syria and Iraq. Islamic State is banned in Macedonia, where participation of the country’s citizens in overseas militant groups carries a sentence of at least four years in prison. The police raids took place late Wednesday in Skopje and the northeastern towns of Kumanovo, Tetovo, Gostivar and Struga.