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

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

 

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

 

Today, the Tribunal delivered approximately 1,000 pages of transcripts produced in local languages to the authorities in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The transcripts were 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 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.

“Thanks to this project, prosecutors in Croatia can more easily assess the probative value of the available ICTY material and use them in war crimes proceedings currently under way before national courts”, said Dragan Novosel, Croatian Deputy State Prosecutor.  He added that “the project significantly facilitates the accomplishment of the common goal of prosecuting war crimes committed during the 1990s on the territory of the former Yugoslavia by the prosecutors in the region.”

Boris Grubešić, Head of the Public Relations Department of the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina, said: “Transcripts in the languages of the region make it easier for local judiciaries to use the testimonies given before the ICTY. Many of our cases include witnesses that testified before the ICTY previously. Their transcripts are therefore very useful in our analysis and investigation of war crimes.”

Approximately 15,500 pages of B/C/S transcripts, out of 42,000 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 approximately 16,000 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 (UNICRI), and OSCE field operations.

War Crimes Justice Project Partners
This project is funded by the European Union	Implemented by: