That Someone Guilty Be Punished - International Center for ...

ut the documentation is still in their archives. It was senseless [ for the SDWC] to charge
him” 811 until supporting evidence arrived from The Hague. According to officials in the SDWC,
however, this happened “only once or twice.” 812
Until amended to correct the problem, the Law on the Transfer of Cases imposed
another challenge: ICTY documents had to be transferred to Bosnia in hard copy. In the “relatively
small case of [Radovan] Stanković,” former ICTY Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte recalled,
her staff had to print, authenticate and transfer some 14,000 pages of documents. 813 Processing
these documents placed enormous burdens on the receiving end too. 814 This burden was
alleviated in July 2006, when the BiH Parliament amended the Law on the Transfer of Cases
to allow ICTY documents to be transferred electronically. 815
Other problems were harder to fix. Because OTP investigations were undertaken with
the expectation that cases would be tried in The Hague, ICTY investigators and prosecutors did
not prepare files in the local languages of the former Yugoslavia. One of the national prosecutors
who worked on an 11 bis case, then SDWC chief David Schwendiman, recalled that he “had
terrible trouble because most of the information was in English.” 816 After all, he noted, “No
one gave any consideration to the fact that [the Bosnian State Court’s] language is Bosnian.” 817
During interviews in June-July 2006, some former and current members of the SDWC
staff described other “teething problems” in their relationship with the ICTY. One of the Bosnian
prosecutors told us that, while the ICTY had never failed to fulfill her requests for information,
key items were sometimes delivered “in a sea of documents,” many not admissible
or useful. 818 In a subsequent interview, SDWC officials recalled that during the early operation
of the department, the ICTY prosecutors “didn’t know what we needed, so they gave us everything.”
819 Other staff members described early problems with database formats and technical
access to documents. Although the ICTY provided the SDWC access to its evidence disclosure
suite—an invaluable resource to the department’s work—the SDWC had not yet received an
ICTY index that would facilitate searches for handwritten documents in the database when
we interviewed SDWC staff in the summer of 2006. 820 Despite these and other challenges,
those interviewed in 2006 gave the ICTY generally high marks for the support it provided
even during the “teething” period, saying Tribunal prosecutors had done the best possible in
light of the challenges they described. 821
Interviewed three years later, when the SDWC had largely completed first instance trials
of 11 bis cases, 822 local prosecutors had high praise for the contributions made by Hague
prosecutors. Reflecting on his office’s relationship with the ICTY, Chief Prosecutor of the
State Court Milorad Barašin told us: “It’s indisputable that the Hague Tribunal gave us major
support in setting up this institution and getting cases going.” 823 Barašin characterized cooperation
with the Hague Tribunal as “great,” adding:
And really, whatever we asked in accordance with [the law] we have received. Above all,
I have to compliment them on their efficiency. Always they have been available, espe-
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