Serbian military hospitals prevent war crimes trials

The NGO Centre for Humanitarian Law on Thursday accused medical officials at the Military Medical Academy in Belgrade and Nis Military Hospital of deliberately obstructing the trials of Serbs suspected of war crimes.

“Pegim is the fault of doctors in whose criminally constituted medical buildings remain uncontrolled”, HLC said in a statement.

The Humanitarian Law Centre cited the trial of Serbian Army officers Pavle Gavrilovic and Ranko Kozlina, who have been indicted for killing 27 people, including a four-year-old boy, during an attack on the Kosovo village of Trnje in March 1999.

Their hearings, scheduled to be held on 13 September, were postponed because Gavrilovijki and Kozlina lawyers presented certificates of doctors from the Military Hospital and Military Medical Academy to justify their lack of customers.

The “everything tells of an organised obstruction of the trial process”, Marina Kljajic told BIRN from HLC.

Both hospitals did not respond to BIRN's requests for comments until the time of the news release.

In Gavriloviki's case, the chairman of the court confirmed in 2016 that the defendant “in the hospital two or three days before his hearing and treatment end after the session is cancelled”.

According to the Centre for Humanitarian Law, the situation is the same as the Kozlina case, but the war crimes prosecutor's request to bring the defendant into custody in 2016 was rejected by the tribunal as early “”.

The centre said the two men's judgment has been delayed in this way since its beginning in 2014, and during the past two and a half years, only nine hearings have been held.

She also cited the case of former Bosnian Serb General Novak Djokiq, charged with ordering the Tuzla massacre, whose trial was postponed last week for the same reasons.

“Djukiq was admitted to hospital on the 6th, so that he would not appear in court on the 8th, and I believe he was released from the hospital on the 9”, Kljajic said.

The Humanitarian Law Centre said that in these cases a pre-conceptiond <x0 obstruction of defence was seen, with co-operation of military medical buildings” and called on the court to put the accused into custody to make sure of his presence in court.

The “in this way, victims who regularly monitor the trial will be brought into play and the legal obligation for the trial to be closed within a certain time”, the Humanitarian Law Centre found.