BiH: landmark case defended by TRIAL soon to be judged by ECHD

In a case soon to be decided by the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg, TRIAL represents the families of thirteen residents of Prijedor municipality who were forcibly disappeared in 1992 during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH).

Early 1992, during the first months of the war ravaging the former Yugoslavia: thirteen men are abducted from their families in the Prijedor region and taken to concentration camps. Evidence indicates that most of them were the victims of extra-judicial killings. Their bodies have never been found. The fate and whereabouts of the thirteen men remain unknown to date.

Families demand justice

More than 20 years afterwards, no serious investigation has been undertaken by the authorities in order to locate the missing persons or their mortal remains and to establish the facts about their fates. Furthermore, the perpetrators of the crimes concerned have not been judged and sanctioned for the disappearance and probable execution of the thirteen men. The families of the victims complain that Bosnia-Herzegovina has failed to fulfill its obligation to thoroughly investigate the enforced disappearance of their missing relatives. They demand to disclose the truth, judge and sanction those responsible for the crimes, provide compensation and redress for the harm suffered.

A landmark case

The European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg could soon precisely deliver the justice they have so long been denied. After two prominent human rights organizations,REDRESS and the World Organization Against Torture (OMCT), were given leave to submit an amicus curiae to the Court in January 2013, TRIAL has just now filed its final submissions in a case that was brought to Strasbourg in September 2008. The judgment to be rendered would be the second ever ruling by the European Court on enforced disappearances committed during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, after the Palić judgment issued in February 2011.

TRIAL litigation activities in Bosnia-Herzegovina

TRIAL represents more than 200 victims of enforced disappearance and extrajudicial killings of the armed conflict in BiH before the European Court of Human Rights and the United Nations Human Rights Committee. TRIAL help them to find out the truth about what happened to their loved ones and to finally get justice and redress.