That Someone Guilty Be Punished - Open Society Foundations

F. Cooperation by Bosnian Authorities
While multinational forces have arrested large numbers of ICTY suspects, others have been
arrested or persuaded to surrender by national authorities. The Bosniak-dominated government
of BiH was the first to transfer to the Tribunal indictees from the ethnic group that
constituted its majority. The government of Bosnia arrested Hazim Delić and Esad Landžo,
indicted for crimes committed at the Čelebići prison camp in 1992, in May 1996 and transferred
them to the Tribunal the following month. 105 But while Bosniak officials were from the
outset cooperative with the ICTY, most of its suspects were in Republika Srpska or, even more
often, in Serbia, where for years they were granted citizenship and protection. In the early postwar
period, RS authorities openly opposed surrender of Bosnian Serbs to the Tribunal. With
Serbs unwilling—and the central Bosnian government unable—to arrest most Serb indictees,
and with the NATO forces hesitant for several years to make arrests, the Tribunal suffered a
crisis of credibility. Two developments brought a crucial turnaround in the ICTY’s fortunes:
the July 1997 SFOR action in Prijedor, in which ICTY indictee Simo Drljača was killed while
resisting arrest, and the surrenders of ten Bosnian Croats in October 1997, the product of
months of intense negotiations between the United States and Croatia. 106
During the first tenure of RS Prime Minister Milorad Dodik (Jan. 1998–Jan. 2001),
RS policy toward the ICTY softened. Dodik allowed the Tribunal to open an office in Banja
Luka, asserting that the public mood had shifted to a degree that surrendering Serbs to the
Tribunal was no longer seen as the “act of a traitor” but instead as a courageous step. 107 Moreover
the terms of Republika Srpska’s new cooperation were controversial: In late 2004, ICTY
officials criticized Bosnian Serbs for offering financial rewards to war crimes suspects who
surrendered. 108
Republika Srpska for the first time transferred war crimes indictees to the ICTY soon
after introducing the new “trading” approach. 109 During 2005 and 2006, RS authorities also
forwarded documents to the ICTY’s Office of the Prosecutor as well as to the Prosecutor’s
Office in Bosnia and Herzegovina. 110 In late December 2006, RS appointed a working group
on cooperation with the ICTY. 111
30 BACKGROUND