VZCZCXYZ0008
PP RUEHWEB

DE RUEHVB #0768/01 2321014
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 201014Z AUG 07
FM AMEMBASSY ZAGREB
TO RUEHBW/AMEMBASSY BELGRADE PRIORITY 1969
RUEHVJ/AMEMBASSY SARAJEVO PRIORITY 0263
RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 8034

UNCLAS ZAGREB 000768 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
DEPT FOR EUR/SCE, S/WCI, INR, INL 
DEPT PLEASE PASS TO NSC BRAUN 
BELGRADE PLEASE PASS TO OPDAT REP AND PODGORICA 
SARAJEVO PLEASE PASS TO OPDAT REP 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PREL KAWC PGOV HR WAR CRIMES
SUBJECT: WAR CRIMES PROSECUTORS TO EXPAND REGIONAL 
COOPERATION 
 
REF: A. ZAGREB 159 
     ¶B. 06 ZAGREB 1251 
     ¶C. 06 ZAGREB 941 
     ¶D. 06 ZAGREB 898 
 
¶1. (U) SUMMARY AND COMMENT: Prosecutors from Croatia, Bosnia, 
Montenegro, Serbia, and the International Criminal Tribunal 
for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) agreed on new forms of 
cooperation in war crimes cases at a private regional meeting 
on Brijuni Island July 11-13.  Chief State Prosecutor Mladen 
Bajic told PolOff August 13 that the prosecutors agreed to 
develop criteria for each state to compile a comprehensive 
"inventory" of pending war crimes cases.  These inventories 
will help avoid duplication of investigations, facilitate 
determination of the best venue for each case, and guide the 
ICTY in rendering increased case development assistance. 
Full text of the meeting's recently published conclusions 
provided below. 
 
¶2. (SBU) According to Bajic, the Brijuni meeting represented 
movement beyond the OSCE-sponsored "Palic Process," which 
helped create a dialogue among regional prosecutors over the 
past two years.  "We don't need the OSCE to bring us together 
any more," Bajic said, pointing to bilateral cooperation 
agreements with BiH, Montenegro, and Serbia and evidence 
transfer agreements with all but BiH (reftels) as concrete 
examples.  Under the auspices of Ambassador for War Crimes 
Issues Clint Williamson, Post's regional S/WCI office is 
organizing a meeting of prosecutors on Hvar Island October 
1-4 to advance development of case inventory criteria and 
promote inclusion of BiH in evidence transfer agreements. 
END SUMMARY AND COMMENT. 
 
CALL FOR ASSISTANCE FROM ICTY TRANSITION TEAM 
--------------------------------------------- 
 
¶3. (SBU) In light of the scheduled closure of the ICTY in 
2010, Bajic said, the meeting focused on convincing ICTY 
chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte of the need to staff up her 
transition team in order to assist regional prosecutors in 
accessing and developing cases from the Tribunal's 
five-million document data base.  While Bajic's team now 
routinely uses ICTY-collected evidence in ongoing 
prosecutions, his regional colleagues have had much less 
exposure to the data base. 
 
¶4. (SBU) According to Thomas Osorio, head of ICTY's Zagreb 
liaison office, the Brijuni meeting served to alert Del Ponte 
to the need to retain knowledgeable staff she would otherwise 
let go as ICTY cases wrap up.  Bajic stressed the need for 
the transition team to be headed by a strong personality with 
some regional clout, such as Del Ponte's chief of 
investigations Patrick Lopez-Torres. 
 
BiH FACES GREATEST CHALLENGES 
----------------------------- 
 
¶5. (SBU) In pushing for each prosecutor to compile an 
inventory of war crimes cases, Bajic admitted that his target 
was BiH, which continues to maintain it has 13,500 open 
cases.  Bajic, who reduced his own case inventory from 4,000 
to about 1,100 through a methodical case review that 
eliminated duplicate cases and those without evidence or 
merit, is convinced BiH could reduce their caseload by 50 
percent or more. 
 
¶6. (SBU) Bajic also expressed interest in concluding an 
evidence transfer agreement with BiH, allowing him to 
prosecute crimes committed in BiH when an accused Croatian 
citizen is apprehended in Croatia and constitutionally cannot 
be extradited.  Croatia has already transferred evidence in 
25 cases to Serbia under a similar bilateral agreement and is 
preparing several cases for Montenegro. 
 
¶7. (SBU) Bosnian courts continue to maintain that anyone 
accused of a war crime in BiH should stand trial in BiH, but 
constitutions in all of its neighbors forbid extradition of 
their own nationals, keeping thousands of cases from moving 
forward.  Bajic explained that the constitutional changes 
that would be required to allow extradition are a political 
impossibility for the time being and something that 
ultimately must be resolved by politicians rather than 
prosecutors.  Since he doesn't expect politicians to take 
this on during his tenure, he sees evidence transfer 
agreements as the only practical way forward in cases where 
 
the accused is exploiting citizenship to avoid justice. 
 
¶8. (SBU) Bajic stressed that BiH war crimes prosecutor 
Jurcevic will face difficult political opposition both in 
culling cases and in agreeing to evidence transfer, so the 
international community, including S/WCI, Embassy Sarajevo, 
and the UN High Rep, will need to publicly support this 
effort. 
 
S/WCI HVAR MEETING TO SERVE AS NEXT STEP FORWARD 
--------------------------------------------- --- 
 
¶9. (SBU) COMMENT: S/WCI's October meeting on Hvar Island, 
with the support of DOJ's OPDAT program, will serve as a key 
opportunity to demonstrate USG support for additional 
progress in regional war crimes cooperation.  In Croatia, 
bilateral cooperation agreements were relatively easy; the 
evidence transfer agreements with Montenegro and Serbia were 
politically trickier.  Asking BiH to drop cases and agree to 
transfer evidence in others is an entirely new level of 
sensitivity.  Post welcomes input from Embassies Sarajevo, 
Belgrade and Podgorica as well as OPDAT/Mission participation 
on Hvar in October.  Post POC is S/WCI FSN Dubravko Bolsec 
( 385-1-661-2473, bolsecd@state.gov).  END COMMENT. 
 
FULL TEXT OF BRIJUNI CONCLUSIONS 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶10. (U) BEGIN TEXT OF CONCLUSIONS: 
At the invitation of the Chief State Attorney of the Republic 
of Croatia, on 11 through 13 July 2007, the State Attorneys' 
(Prosecutor's) Regional Conference; "Cooperation among State 
Attorneys' Offices (Prosecutors) in War Crimes Prosecutions - 
Current and Future Modes of Cooperation" was held in Brijuni, 
Republic of Croatia. 
 
Together with the State Attorneys (prosecutors) from Bosnia 
and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Croatia and Serbia, the ICTY 
Chief Prosecutor and the Head of the OTP Transition Team with 
their staffs also participated in the conference. 
 
After reviewing the current cooperation and the proposals for 
future cooperation, both among the State Attorneys of the 
countries of the region as well as with the ICTY Office of 
the Prosecutor concerning the war crimes prosecutions and the 
matters of mutual support and technical assistance, 
participants in the conference agreed on the following; 
 
CONCLUSIONS 
 
¶A.  The participants agreed that the cooperation between the 
State Attorneys Offices (prosecution) engaged in the 
investigations and prosecution of war crimes was 
progressing well. This cooperation was supported to a 
significant degree by the Agreements (Memoranda) on 
Cooperation that had been signed between the participants 
that made possible the efficient and timely exchange of 
information and other forms of assistance. It was noted that 
additional forms of cooperation and assistance that would be 
needed in the future would be the access to documentation and 
information from the other national bodies, including 
archives, and that the modalities of this information 
examination and exchange would be agreed upon at one of the 
future conferences. 
 
¶B.  Each national prosecution service needs to enhance its 
teams (staff) working on the investigation and war crimes 
prosecutions. It is of special importance for each State 
Attorney's Office (prosecution) to train part of its staff in 
skills needed for electronic database research and other 
information retrieval skills. 
 
¶C. Particularly noted at the conference was the need to avoid 
the duplication of investigations and proceedings through the 
compilation of a so called "inventory" of cases and the 
exchange of information with other prosecutions so as to 
determine who would best positioned to process a particular 
case. To this end, it is necessary that each State Attorney's 
Office (prosecution) compile the so called "inventory" of war 
crimes cases according to a mutually agreed criteria that 
would be developed in conjunction with the OTP's Transition 
Team. 
 
¶D. The participants agreed that the "Inventory" based on the 
mutually agreed criteria and their exchange would improve the 
 
cooperation and assistance in decision making as to who would 
process the proceedings in order to avoid duplication of 
investigations and cases. This "inventory" would also assist 
the ICTY, and in particular the Office of the Prosecutor, in 
determining the number and complexity of the cases requiring 
the immediate assistance of the Transition Team in gathering 
and providing new evidence and documentation in support of 
national prosecutions. 
 
¶E. It is necessary, as part of the ICTY's Completion 
Strategy, to provide the assistance of experts in Transition 
Teams. The experts would assist State Attorneys (prosecutors) 
in national teams and train them in researching the ICTY 
databases that would enable the Prosecutions to optimally use 
the information both in investigations and proceedings 
transferred to them and in the proceedings initiated by them. 
 
 
¶F. The participants welcomed the offer by the ICTY Chief 
Prosecutor to enhance the OTP's support to the region, via 
its Transition Team that would provide improved cooperation, 
as well as expertise to respond to the specific needs of the 
States Attorneys (prosecutors) engaged in specific cases. 
Aware of the ICTY's Completion Strategy, the national 
prosecutors urged the ICTY Chief Prosecutor to ensure that 
the OTP not only retained, but enhanced its capacity to 
respond in a timely manner to their requests for assistance. 
 
 
¶G. The State Attorneys (prosecutors) also welcomed the ICTY 
Chief Prosecutor's offer to provide training to their staffs 
on the use of the ICTY databases for their needs, 
underscoring the necessity of immediate and continuing access 
to and use of the ICTY materials. 
 
¶H. The participants agree that it would be productive to 
meet, in this format, and the next conference to agree on the 
mutual criteria to create lists of war crimes cases will be 
set for autumn 2007.  END TEXT OF CONCLUSIONS. 
 
BRADTKE