Kosovo Specialist Prosecutor Charges Thaci with War Crimes
A ten-count indictment has been filed against Kosovo's President Hashim Thaci charging him with crimes allegedly committed in the independence war of the late-1990s, including murder and torture.
View ArticleCroatia has Tarnished its Image Over the Bleiburg Mass
The Croatian state’s support for the commemoration in Sarajevo of the Bleiburg massacre victims was a cynical political move that risks damaging its international image, and relations with Bosnia.
View ArticleTwo Decades on, Kosovo’s Guerrilla Boss Thaci May Finally Face Trial
The indictment filed by the Specialist Prosecutor charging Kosovo President Hashim Thaci was a long-awaited move that follows two decades of investigations into alleged wartime wrongdoings.
View ArticleAlbanian Premier Condemns Thaci and Veseli War Crime Indictments
Prime Minister Edi Rama told the Albanian parliament on Thursday that the charges against Hashim Thaci and Kadri Veseli did not just concern individuals but formed part of a wider attack on Kosovo and...
View ArticleMontenegro Succumbed to Ethno-Nationalism Without Resistance
The best elements of society stood silently by while ethno-nationalism, fascism and clericalism escalated in Montenegro – and it is time to take a stand.
View ArticleFear Makes Kosovo’s Wartime Rape Survivors Guard Their Secrets
Kosovo offers welfare payments to survivors of sexual violence during the 1998-99 war - but some women are afraid to register in case their relatives or neighbours find out and they are ostracised...
View ArticleHow Denial of Bosnian War Crimes Entered the Mainstream
On the eve of the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica massacre, Serb revisionist rhetoric about war crimes in Bosnia has spread beyond fringe circles, infiltrating mainstream academic and public...
View ArticleAlbania PM: Thaci War Crime Claims are ‘Anti-Kosovo’
On a visit to Pristina, Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama said that an indictment accusing Kosovo’s President Hashim Thaci of committing war crimes was a “brutal act” against Kosovo itself.
View ArticleCroatia Still Wandering Around Wartime President’s ‘Wastelands’
Thirty years after Franjo Tudjman’s ‘Wastelands of Historical Reality’, memory politics in Croatia are still trying to reconcile the dead and downplay or sanitise the World War Two fascist Ustasha regime.
View ArticleRomania to Investigate Communist Border Troops Who Shot Defectors
The Romanian government body that helped secure the convictions of Communist-era prison commanders is now probing border officers who shot people trying to escape the country.
View ArticleNew Head of Bosnian TV Regulator Criticised for War Crime Coverage
The appointment of Drasko Milinovic as the new director of Bosnia’s Communications Regulatory Agency has drawn criticism because Republika Srpska’s public broadcaster was penalised at least three times...
View ArticleNorth Macedonia Marks Anniversary of Deal to End Internal Conflict
North Macedonia’s deputy premier said the signing of the Ohrid Peace Accord, which ended a six-month ethnic Albanian insurgency in 2001, led to NATO membership and “permanent security” in the country.
View ArticleEU Must Confront Croatia’s President over Operation Storm Remarks
During a ceremony commemorating the 25th anniversary of Operation Storm, Croatia’s president made incendiary remarks that denied atrocities committed by Croatian forces against its ethnic Serb...
View ArticleHague War Crime Prosecutors Call Kosovo Ex-PM for Questioning
Former Kosovo Liberation Army commander Agim Ceku, who later became the country’s prime minister, said that he has been summoned by war crimes prosecutors in The Hague for questioning as a suspect.
View ArticleMore Leaked Kosovo War Crime Files Returned to Hague Court
A second batch of war crimes case documents that were delivered anonymously to the Kosovo Liberation Army War Veterans’ Organisation have been handed back to the Hague-based Kosovo Specialist Chambers.
View ArticleRemains of Five Bosnia War Victims Discovered Near Sanski Most
The bodies of five victims of the war in Bosnia, thought to have been killed in 1995, have been found at the Greda locality, near Sanski Most, at the site where 70 bodies were exhumed before.
View ArticleNorth Macedonia: Justice Postponed Again in Mass Murder Trial
Hopes that the prime minister’s testimony in court and details from covert surveillance tapes of ex-officials would shed new light on a gruesome, ethnically-charged murder case were dashed, while the...
View ArticleEthnic Discord, Covert Tapes Animate North Macedonia Murder Trial
An ethnically-charged, politically contentious retrial of six ethnic Albanians for the 2012 murders of five Macedonian men was expected to cast fresh light on the gruesome case, but as the final...
View ArticleMonastery’s Inclusion on Endangered Sites List Irks Kosovo Leaders
Kosovo leaders have criticised the decision to include the famous Serbian Orthodox Decani Monastery on a list of the seven most endangered sites in Europe, calling it unnecessary.
View ArticleProsecutors to Probe Day Honouring Russian Fighters in Bosnian War
The State Prosecutor's Office has pledged to investigate an announced 'Day of Russian Volunteers' in the eastern town of Visegrad, honouring Russians who fought for the Bosnian Serb side in the 1992-5...
View ArticleMontenegrin Prosecutor Promises to Identify War Criminals
Special State Prosecutor Milivoje Katnic promised to take action against Montenegrin citizens who were involved in war crimes after repeated criticism that the country is failing to bring perpetrators...
View ArticleBIRN Fact-Check: Has Montenegro’s Srebrenica Resolution ‘Stigmatised’ Serbia?
After Serbia's President on Sunday claimed Montenegro’s resolution condemning the Srebrenica genocide 'leaves a stigma on an entire nation', BIRN has examined whether the document does, in fact, lay...
View ArticleKosovo Reburies Three Recently Found War Victims
The remains of three victims of the Kosovo war, exhumed last year from mass graves, were reburied on Friday at a graveyard in the northern city of Mitrovica.
View ArticleMontenegro Urged to Make War Crimes Prosecution Priority
On the 30th anniversary of the bombardment of Dubrovnik – in which Montenegrin troops took part – NGOs have called on the government to end the culture of impunity over war crimes committed in the 1990s.
View ArticleNorth Macedonia Deal to Revisit Ethnically Charged Cases Questioned
The government's agreement to its new coalition partner's demand – for an international investigation into several ethnically charged terrorism trials – has raised more questions than it answers.
View ArticleNorth Macedonia: Discrimination Claims Haunt Ethnically-Charged Trials
North Macedonia witnessed new protests over a court verdict in the retrial of an ethnically-sensitive murder case, and faced demands for international investigations into the fairness of terrorism...
View ArticleFrom Chaos to Capitalism: Telling Tales of Croatia’s Transformation
Prize-winning Croatian novelist Masha Kolanovic writes about the legacy of the country’s wartime past and its troubled transition to capitalism, documenting a dream of freedom that turned sour.
View ArticleSerbian Academics Denounce Croatian Counterparts’ “Inflammatory” Demands
Serbian academics have hit out at a list of demands set by their Croatian counterparts that go to the heart of decades of dispute.
View ArticleNorth Macedonia Marks Karpalak Massacre’s 21st Anniversary
Military chiefs, politicians and relatives of the victims have paid tribute to the ten soldiers killed in an ethnic Albanian ambush on the 21st anniversary of the massacre.
View ArticleSarajevo Plans Memorial Room for Children Killed in War
The planned memorial room in central Sarajevo will contain exhibits telling the story of how more 1,500 children were killed during the wartime siege of the Bosnian capital.
View Article‘It Was Hell’: Dutch Troops Recall Failure to Stop Srebrenica Deaths
Veterans of the Dutch UN peacekeeping battalion deployed in Srebrenica remember how they were left powerless to prevent the genocide of Bosniaks by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995 - and how the...
View ArticleBosnia Activists Mark More Wartime ‘Suffering Sites’
A group of activists are continuing their campaign to put up temporary memorials at places where crimes took place during the 1992-5 war – whether the local authorities like it or not.
View ArticleNew Hope Offered to Kosovo’s Wartime Rape Victims
A new project aims to supply more targeted medical and psychological support to wartime rape survivors in Kosovo – many of whom, over two decades on, have yet to find help or healing.
View ArticleLast Despatches: Serb Radio Team Abducted in Kosovo and Never Found
Twenty-one years ago, radio journalist Djuro Slavuj and driver Ranko Perenic were seized by armed men while on assignment in western Kosovo - but the investigation was halted before the perpetrators...
View ArticleSurvivors, Relatives to Mark Notorious Bosnia Massacre Anniversary
The Bosniak and Croat victims were selected, transported and executed at Mount Vlasic by Bosnian Serb police, their bodies tossed into a pit.
View ArticleSentences Cut for Bosnian Serbs Behind Teslic Massacre
The Appeals Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina has reduced the prison sentences for four Bosnian Serb former soldiers to a total of 59 years for participation in the murder of 28 civilians...
View ArticleCroatian Serbs Attacked by Masked Assailants in Two Bars
Croatian Serb leaders say Wednesday’s attacks were the latest in a string of incidents targeting ethnic Serbs.
View ArticleBosnian Court Confirms Verdict for Wartime Rape
The victim was ‘convincing and consistent’ in her testimony, the judge said in the first instance verdict.
View ArticleBosnia Court Confirms Six-Year Sentence for Rogatica Crimes
The crimes were committed in eastern Bosnia during a wave of ethnic cleansing by Bosnian Serb forces at the start of the 1992-95 war.
View ArticleBosnian Court Increases Sentence for Bosanski Brod Crimes
Alminko Islamovic was convicted in April of the inhumane treatment of Serb civilians during the 1992-95 Bosnian war.
View ArticleHague Prosecutors Summon Haradinaj Ally for Questioning
The Kosovo Specialist Prosecution has asked another former Kosovo Liberation Army commander, Lulzim Kabashi, to come to The Hague to answer questions about his conduct during the independence war.
View ArticleIn Australia, Some Croats Openly Celebrate Fascism
As Croatia struggles with fascist nostalgia and historical revisionism, thousands of miles away in Australia, the Croatian community openly celebrates its Ustasa links.
View ArticleNorth Macedonia Commemorates Soldiers Killed in Yugoslav Wars
North Macedonia held a ceremony to commemorate the Macedonian soldiers who were killed during the early stages of the bloody break-up of the former Yugoslavia in the early 1990s.
View ArticleHague Court Revised Rulebook ‘Over Karadzic Case Concerns’
Changes to the rules on exempting judges have been made solely – experts say – to ensure one judge in particular does not allow a reconsideration of Radovan Karadzic’s life sentence.
View ArticleLanguage Law Tests Ethnic Relations in North Macedonia Again
A law widening the official use of the Albanian language tested the alliance between the governing parties in 2019, while hopes that covert surveillance tapes might spark a breakthrough in an...
View ArticleWarrant Sought for Missing Vlasenica War Crimes Suspect
Arrest warrant sought for Goran Tesic, who is wanted for war crimes in the eastern town of Vlasenica, who did not show up for his preliminary hearing.
View ArticleWhen Romania Flirted with a Fate like Yugoslavia’s
Thirty years since Romania’s Black March violence, BIRN reconstructs the events that would shape post-communist relations between Romanians and the country’s Hungarian minority for years to come.
View ArticleLast Despatches: Serbian Reporter Probed Links Between Crime, Politics, War
Radislava ‘Dada’ Vujasinovic received threats over her reports on the Croatian and Bosnian wars, and when she was found dead from a shotgun blast in 1994, police said it was suicide - but family and...
View ArticleKosovo Prosecution File Details War Crime Claims Against Arrested Serbs
A Kosovo prosecution file, seen by BIRN, alleges that three Serbs, whose arrest this week angered Belgrade, illegally detained and tortured civilians in Vushtrri/Vucitrn during the Kosovo war in 1999.
View ArticleFormer Guerrilla Arrested in Kosovo, Sent to The Hague
The arrest of former MP and guerrilla fighter Haxhi Shala comes amid a probe into alleged obstruction of justice.
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