The Court of BiH and the BiH Constitutional Court have begun ordering the release and retrial of individuals previously convicted of war crimes, following a ruling by the European Court of Human Rights that said the Court of BiH could not apply the 2003 Criminal Code for crimes committed before that Code took effect.
More than ten formerly convicted men have been released from prison pending new trials, and up to 30 cases in total could be overturned, according to some sources. But now some lawyers in BiH are expressing concern that retrying these cases could exacerbate the already notorious backlog of cases waiting to be tried at the Court. BiH officials denied that the retrials would cause a disruption:
The president of Bosnia’s High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council, Milorad Novkovic, said however that the problems predicted by the lawyers would not arise.
“There is no reason for a blockage of the work of the Bosnian state court,” Novkovic said.
Bosnia’s deputy justice minister Srdjan Radulj also insisted that the court would not be overloaded by retrials, but also admitted that they would take time and cost money.
“This will certainly raise the expenses of the Bosnian state court, but I hope they can finish cases quickly,” Radulj told BIRN.
