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

ing and reviewing large volumes of material as applied by OTP criminal analysts and be the
contact points for colleagues in their respective national prosecution services working on war
crimes investigations and cases.” 844 At least one Bosnian defense lawyer has also had a fellowship
at the ICTY. 845
A second effort is a joint project among the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions
and Human Rights (ODIHR), the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute
(UNICRI), and the ICTY which was launched in May 2008. After a year-long consultation
process with local actors and international organizations that have been engaged in judicial
capacity building within the region, the project identified outstanding judicial needs and evaluated
the effectiveness of past efforts. 846 In addition, in May 2009 the ICTY published a comprehensive
guide to what it calls its “developed practices” that captures practical operational
procedures in areas such as investigations, judgment drafting, management of the Detention
Unit and legal aid policies. 847
It bears repeating that, while this chapter focuses on the ICTY’s contributions, numerous
other organizations have played a major role in preparing Bosnian lawyers for war crimes
prosecutions. While ICTY personnel have often participated in programs organized by others,
their engagement constitutes a comparatively small part of a larger picture. 848
b. From The Hague to Sarajevo
Expertise has also migrated from The Hague to Sarajevo in another form: Many of the international
personnel who have staffed the Court of BiH in its early years have had previous
experience in The Hague. 849 These officials and staff have been able to bring to their jobs in
Bosnia a wealth of expertise.
Three of the international judges serving on the BWCC as of July 2009 previously
worked as prosecutors at the ICTY, 850 while Judge Almiro Rodrigues, who was an ICTY judge
from 1997 to 2001, served as one of the international judges on the BWCC from April 2005
to April 2009. Judge Meddžida Kreso, president of the state court, believes that the presence
of international judges on the court “gave us a lot of good results in the sense of applying
international standards.” 851 Former HJPC President Branko Perić believes that the contributions
of judges with previous ICTY experience were especially important, noting that Bosnian
judges on the state court told him “how helpful Judge Rodrigues was for them” as they first
confronted the myriad challenges associated with trying complex war crimes cases. 852
Perić contrasted the former ICTY judge’s contributions with those of other international
judges who lacked a previous background in war crimes cases and who were in much “the
same position as domestic judges” when it came to inexperience in this area. Thus, he concluded,
the BWCC and the SDWC would be improved if more judges and prosecutors with
previous ICTY experience could be involved, “perhaps in the form of counselors and monitoring
teams for judges and prosecutors” in Bosnia. 853 Perić was not alone in noting that interna-
124 IMPACT ON DOMESTIC WAR CRIMES PROSECUTIONS