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minorities of Albanians and Bosniaks, was never going tohave a groundswell of popular support for domestic warcrimes trials.Of course, resistance within the government is themore problematic factor in pursuing war crimes cases.Milosevic’s fall did not bring a lustration or vetting policy –as seen, for example, in Eastern Europe after the dissolutionof the Soviet bloc – that would have removed some ofthe corrupt and criminal elements from the governmentand mitigated the disastrous effects of his legacy.Many people in the army and the police have a vestedinterest in blocking cases."Obstruction is often inherent in these cases," Vukcevicsaid. "There are people within the police and militaryranks who are still holding important positions in theseinstitutions and who – directly or indirectly – wereinvolved in war crimes. They will do anything in order toevade criminal prosecution."One commonly cited problem, which Ellis had warnedagainst in 2003, was the placement of the new war crimesinvestigations unit within the police forces, which meansthe unit is often investigating its own colleagues and hasbeen viewed as traitorous. Human rights groups havequestioned the unit’s initiative on occasion. In 2006,the Humanitarian Law Center successfully lobbiedfor the removal of the head of the war crimesinvestigations unit and two other members by contendingthat they were present in Kosovo in 1999 during thecommission of war crimes.War crimes cases are almost always extremelycomplicated, regardless of the jurisdiction or the precedingconflict, often as a result of evidentiary challengescreated by a lack of paper trails or other documentationof criminal intent. This leads to a reliance on witnesseswho, whether they are victims or “insiders” withknowledge of criminal acts, will likely be reluctant totestify. In the former Yugoslavia, witnesses are scatteredthroughout the region, often outside the jurisdiction ofthe cases to which they are relevant.The OSCE has worked to facilitate cooperation betweenthe different domestic prosecution offices for war crimes.Cooperation has been most effective between Serbia andCroatia, which entered into an agreement in 2006 over theexchange of evidence and cases to work around each country’sbarring of extradition of their nationals. Serbia and Bosnia-Herzegovina have not reached a similar pact. Leaders of thethree countries have also failed to iron out an agreementthat would have each government focus on prosecuting itsown citizens. This is desirable because the issuing of arrestwarrants by one country for another country’s citizenshas been controversial and often criticized as politicallymotivated. In one well-known example, a court in Londonin 2010 refused Serbia’s request for the extradition of EjupGanic, a former member of the Bosnian presidency, for hisalleged responsibility for war crimes against the Yugoslavarmy. In 2011, an Austrian court refused an extraditionrequest for former Bosnia-Herzegovina General Jovan Divjak,also wanted by Serbia authorities.Relations between Serbia and Croatia also took anegative turn last year when Croatia’s parliament – inresponse to an indictment of Croat defendants forwardedon to Croatian prosecutors by Vukcevic’s office – passeda law purporting to invalidate all laws in Serbia thatdeal with the prosecution of Croatian citizens from thewar. (Croatia’s prosecutor did not support the act and hascontinued to cooperate with Vukcevic’s team.)Yet Serbia’s war crimes prosecution office has hadsome advantages, including the transfer of evidencefrom cases that the ICTY had already completed orinitiated, giving Vukcevic’s team a head start in some domesticcases. The office also had evidentiary assistance fromKandic and the Humanitarian Law Center, which has beenwidely praised for locating witnesses in victim populationsand securing their participation at trials. (In Serbia’slegal system, civil society organizations can representvictims in the trials and can file private criminal complaintsin matters where the government has not acted.)“They understood my explanation that they shouldfight for justice by directly participating in the trials, bytestifying in court, because that means their testimony willlive forever in the record,” Kandic explained in an interview.“Nobody can manipulate their testimony. Every word fromtheir testimony will be there forever. They understood whythat’s important.”The international assistance has also been ongoing,in Serbia and elsewhere in the region. It culminatedin recent years with the War Crimes Justice Project, afour-million-Euro effort funded by the European Unionand run collaboratively by the OSCE, the ICTY andthe U.N.’s Interregional Crime and Justice ResearchInstitute. According to the OSCE's website, the projectprovided training to 800 legal professionals in the regionand produced curriculum materials on internationalcriminal law and ICTY caselaw that are tailored to eachnation’s justice system. Part of the funding was used totranslate tens of thousands of pages of ICTY trialtranscripts and appellate decisions into local languagesfor use by national prosecutors and judges. The projectalso funded additional staff positions in the nationalchambers and prosecutor offices.Perhaps more important is what this assistance hasrepresented over the years – clear support of the domesticsystem by the European Union and the United States.Nationalistic politicians and media outlets have been vocalin their criticism of figures like Vukcevic and Kandic, butthe importance of economic aid and the prospect of EUmembership have prevented these hostile forces fromshutting the domestic system down.L A W D R A G O N 44 I s s u e 13