ICTY Delivers Priority Transcripts to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia

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

The Hague, 13 September 2011
VE/MOW.PR1438e

ICTY Delivers Priority Transcripts to Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia

 

Today the Tribunal delivered 1700 pages of trial transcripts in the Bosnian, Croatian and Serbian language to the judicial authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia. This delivery responded to a request for priority transcripts made by the judicial authorities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and in Serbia to support their ongoing war crimes investigations and prosecutions.

The delivery of these trial transcripts brings the total number of pages in response to priority requirements from BiH, Croatian and Serbian judicial authorities to 18,000. This is the last set of priority transcripts to be delivered as part of the War Crimes Justice Project (WCJP) which has been dedicated to improving the ability of legal practitioners in the region to access and utilise testimony given before the ICTY.  In addition to these 18,000 priority pages, the ICTY continues to produce trial transcripts in key cases identified by regional stakeholders. Before the WCJP ends in October 2011, a total of 60,000 pages of ICTY trial transcripts will be available in the local languages.

Out of the planned 60,000 pages, there are presently 53,000 pages of testimony which have been completed and many of these transcripts are available on the ICTY’s Court Records Database and the relevant case pages on the ICTY website. All of the produced transcripts will be made available by the end of 2011.

“I am very happy that the WCJP has enabled us to provide our colleagues in the region with transcripts of the Tribunal’s trials in their languages,” John Hocking, Registrar of the ICTY. “This part of the Project has been instrumental in making the Tribunal’s materials more accessible and user-friendly to legal practitioners and the public in general, and will undoubtedly be of great benefit to the processing of war crimes cases across the former Yugoslavia.”

Acknowledging the value of delivery of transcripts, Vladimir Vukčević, Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor, stated: "Transcripts from the trials before the ICTY provide the possibility for our Prosecution Office to identify new information, witnesses or evidence that can be helpful in our own war crimes investigations and trials in Serbia. The transcripts are one of the examples of direct co-operation between the Tribunal and the national judiciaries in domestic war crimes proceedings, and results of the Tribunal’s work, like this one will continue to be of significant assistance to our judiciary."

The aim of the WCJP is to enhance the capacity of regional judiciaries to handle complex war crime cases by assisting in the transfer of knowledge and materials from the ICTY to legal professionals in the region. It was launched in July 2010 and will conclude in October 2011.

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

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.

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