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

d. Applying lessons learned from ICTY missteps
At times, staff who brought prior ICTY experience to Bosnia have helped improve upon the
state court’s approach by applying to their work in Bosnia lessons learned the hard way in The
Hague. The experience of Lucia Dighiero exemplifies the point. In December 2004, Dighiero,
who had worked in the ICTY’s Victims and Witnesses Section (VWS) since 2002, became the
first director of the Witness and Victim Support Section (WSS) of the Court of BiH. As an ICTY
victim support officer observed, Dighiero was able to “take the bits that were helpful” from her
experience in the ICTY’s VWS and “transfer[] her … skills to the locally recruited staff,” while
adapting expertise developed in The Hague to a different context. 865 Dighiero recalled that, as
the unit in Sarajevo was being established, “they had a concept but no practical experience”
in working with vulnerable witnesses. 866 Dighiero was able to bring to bear a broad range of
practical experience in setting up the new office, which she applied in hiring and training staff
and, 867 most important, in establishing protocols for assisting witnesses.
In Dighiero’s view, the ICTY’s “main influence” on the office she helped launch, “was
the idea of this VWS.” 868 While the VWS provided an important model and a key source
of expertise, the ICTY’s approach also provided a cautionary tale. For Dighiero, it was all
important that the fledgling BWCC avoid “this bureaucracy with the ICTY,” where staff in the
VWS could not directly address judges about witnesses’ psychological state but instead had to
communicate through the UN hierarchical structure of intermediate officials. “At the ICTY,”
she recalled, “it was very formal.” At the BWCC, she could communicate directly with judges
about witnesses’ practical needs in the courtroom—things as mundane as a witness’s need to
take a 15-minute break—and “they listen to us … they accept that we’re part of the process.” 869
Dighiero also made sure that her office could establish contact with witnesses earlier
than was possible in the ICTY. The VWS generally did not get involved with witnesses until
they received a summons. “Often,” Dighiero recalled, “issues were coming up that could have
been solved” if the section had been able to establish contact sooner. 870 At the Court of BiH,
her office is able to establish contact sooner: in the case of prosecution witnesses, typically two
to three months before they testify. 871
4. Completing the “completion strategy”
Like many victims of wartime atrocities, Josip Drežnjak and Drago Zadro had hoped to find
justice in The Hague—but now realize that the only justice they may find will come from
domestic courts. And like many victims, the men have found that justice in Bosnia might be
found, if at all, in courts that were not addressed in the ICTY’s completion strategy.
Both men lost several relatives in a notorious 1993 massacre in Grabovica in which 33
Croat civilians were slaughtered by Bosniak soldiers. The victims included Drežnjak’s mother,
father, and sister-in-law; Zadro lost his mother, father, brother, sister-in-law, and a four-year-old
niece, and has raised the slain toddler’s two brothers, who managed to escape the slaughter.
126 IMPACT ON DOMESTIC WAR CRIMES PROSECUTIONS