ICTY Delivers New Set of Transcripts to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia

Press Release	TRIBUNAL
(Exclusively for the use of the media. Not an official document)

The Hague, 30 May 2011
VE/MOW/1413e

ICTY Delivers New Set of Transcripts to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia

 

Today, the Tribunal delivered approximately 3,900 pages of transcripts produced in local languages to the authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.

The transcripts are delivered as part of the War Crimes Justice Project (WCJP), which aims to enhance the capacity of regional judiciaries to handle complex war crimes cases, by assisting in the transfer of knowledge and materials from the ICTY to legal professionals in the region. The provision of transcripts in the local languages is expected to improve the ability of these practitioners to access and utilise testimony given before the ICTY.

The transcripts are being produced in the region’s local languages from the audio recordings of ICTY court hearings. Until October 2010, the trial transcripts were available only in English and French, the official languages of the ICTY.

Commenting on this aspect of the Project, the office of the War Crimes Prosecutor in Serbia said, “These transcripts are of precious assistance and will speed up the process of determining the full individual responsibility for war crimes committed during the 1990s. We are aware that transcribing court proceedings is a lengthy task, and therefore the War Crimes Prosecutor’s Office is actively engaged in prioritising these documents. The continuation and expansion of this project will be one of the key elements of gradual transfer of responsibility for adjudication of war crimes from the international to national level.”

Approximately 9,500 pages of B/C/S transcripts, out of 34,000 already produced as part of the project, are now available on the Tribunal’s Internet Court Records database (ICR). Additional transcripts will be uploaded on the ICR in the coming months, with the aim of publishing the targeted 60,000 pages of transcripts by the end of 2011. Transcripts can be accessed via the following link on the ICTY’s website: http://icr.icty.org.

Since the launch of the WCJP in July 2010, the ICTY has delivered 12,900 pages of B/C/S public trial transcripts to the authorities in Croatia, Serbia and BiH.

The War Crimes Justice Project is a 4-million euro regional project funded by the European Union and carried out by the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR), in partnership with the ICTY, the UN Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, and OSCE field operations.
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War Crimes Justice Project Partners
This project is funded by the European Union	Implemented by: