Judgment in Lack of War Crimes: Condemnees may seek retrial, waste time and resources

The lack of judgment in war crimes cases is estimated to be with many challenges and will not have the proper effect by the Fund for Humanitarian Law.

According to them, this form conflicts with the rights of the accused to defend himself, despite being represented by a lawyer. According to this Fund, even if someone is convicted in law-freeness the moment he is arrested to serve his sentence, he has the right automatically to seek retrial.

Bekim Blakaj, director of the Humanitarian Law Fund, has said in an interview for Online Economics that the Fund has not supported judgments in absence since, according to him, there are problems in practice.

He said this form would not produce the right effect because even if they were punished in absence, the responsible would not bear the punishment.

That the Fund for Humanitarian Law in Kosovo initially does not support judgment in absentia for many reasons. It's those reasons because they're at odds with the rights of the accused to defend themselves, so they're present in court. On the other hand, there are also practical problems with those faced by prosecutors in Croatia who have actually filed charges, and many of them have concluded before the European Court for Human Rights, and the state of Croatia has lost them. I don't believe that there will be a proper effect at the end even if the prosecutor brings sufficient evidence even meritily punished the defendants in the absence yet they are not who answer to justice, respectively, do not carry their sentence, even though at first it will seem like relief for the families of victims”, he said.

According to Blakaj, among the challenges that will follow this process are the failure to issue the defendants' statements.

According to him, the law envisions that in whatever circumstances a person is convicted in absence at the moment he is automatically arrested has the right to seek retrial, which would consume time, resources and cause problems.

“The first challenges he will face in court is that he cannot get a statement from the defendants, so they will not give the statement themselves. They will be unable either to plead guilty or innocent. On the other hand, the prosecution will probably have him barking to bring various witnesses who will not be challenged by the defendant's defense, even though they will have an official lawyer, but effective defence is certainly not the same as attorneys on official duty. Eventually, defendants cannot ask questions, nor can they offer alibis in this process”.

The other question is that the law predicts that in whatever circumstances anyone is convicted in absence, the moment they are arrested for maintaining the sentence, he has the right automatically to seek retrial. So the trial will take place from the start. Too much time consumption and resources can also cause problems. Finally, if the act present to the accused repeats the process will be different from that in absentia, then it will show that there is a possibility that someone will be punished without being guilty”, he said.

He said that, so far by the Special Prosecutor, six acts have been handed over, in which, according to him, the overwhelming majority of the accused are Serbian citizens.

If I'm not mistaken so far, there are six charges handed over by the Special Prosecutor of Kosovo to that Special Chamber near the Foundation Court in Pristina, so six acts if I'm not mistaken for six people. We do not know exactly their identity because they are still initial, but we are assuming that the overwhelming majority of them are Serbian”, he said. / EO/