That Someone Guilty Be Punished - Open Society Foundations

713. The Rome Agreement signed by the three Balkan presidents provided in part:
Persons, other than those already indicted by the International Tribunal, may be arrested
and detained for serious violations of international humanitarian law only pursuant to a
previously issued order, warrant, or indictment that has been reviewed and deemed consistent
with international legal standards by the International Tribunal. Procedures will be
developed for expeditious decision by the Tribunal and will be effective immediately upon
such action.
Agreed Measures, 5 (Feb. 18, 1996), at http://www.nato.int/IFOR/rome/rome2.htm.
714. ICTY Web site, at http://www.icty.org/sid/96. Other sources, including some cited below,
use slightly different figures than those provided on the Tribunal’s Web site.
715. David Tolbert and Aleksandar Kontić, The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia:
Transitional Justice, the Transfer of Cases to National Courts, and Lessons for the ICC, in Carsten
Stahn and Goren Sluiter (eds.), The Emerging Practice of the International Criminal Court, p. 142
(2008) (hereinafter Tolbert and Kontic, Transitional Justice).
716. Interview with Damir Arnault, advisor for legal and constitutional affairs, Cabinet of Dr.
Haris Silajžić, Sarajevo, July 16, 2009.
717. As two former OTP attorneys recalled, the office’s review role under the Rules of the Road
agreement “was a limited one,” aimed solely at determining whether the evidence submitted by
local authorities “was sufficient under international standards to justify the arrest or indictment of
a suspect or continued detention of a prisoner.” Id.
718. When the OTP reviewed a file submitted by Bosnian prosecutors, it assigned one of seven
possible designations. A marking of “A” indicated that the file contained sufficient evidence to
establish reasonable grounds for suspicion that a person committed a war crime, while a marking of
“B” indicated the opposite. See id. A “C” marking reflected the OTP’s inability to make a judgment
based on the evidence in the file. See id., pp. 142-43. For a brief description of other notations, see
id., p. 143 n.32.
719. Id., p. 145. The Transitional Justice Guidebook for Bosnia and Herzegovina, produced by the
United Nations Development Programme, credits the Rules of the Road program with “raising the
professional level of BiH’s judicial institutions.” Executive Summary, p. 17. (Only the Executive
Summary is available in English.)
720. The Rome Agreement placed a time-consuming and unfunded responsibility on the OTP
beyond the core mandate set forth in its statute. Tolbert and Kontić later recalled the immediate
impact of the Agreement on the OTP:
[T]here were no resources or funding provided for the project in the ICTY’s budget, and
the extra-budgetary funds had to be raised to support the project. Moreover, given that the
OTP’s staff were fully focused on investigations, trials, and appeals, additional external legal
specialists were required to be identified and recruited to handle the demands of the project.
There was also a heavy demand for translation resources to support the effort of these
specialists, except to the extent lawyers with the requisite language skills could be identified.
Id., p. 143.
721. William W. Burke-White, The Domestic Influence of International Criminal Trials: The International
Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and the Creation of the State Court of Bosnia and
THAT SOMEONE GUILTY BE PUNISHED 187