Complementarity: Contest or Collaboration? - FICHL

Complementarity and the Exercise of Universal Jurisdiction for
Core International Crimes
as was Aleksandar Medić, and indicted on 21 April 2008. On 17 June
2009, the court convicted three members, Ţeljko Djukić, Dragan Medić,
Dragan Borojević, to maximum sentences of 20 years imprisonment, and
another one, Miodrag Šolaja to 15 years, because he was a minor at the
time when the crime was committed.
In addition, Anton Lekaj, a member of the military police forces
within the Kosovo Liberation Army, received a sentence of 13 years on
18 September 2006.
Saša Radak was convicted to 20 years on 6 September 2006 for his
participation of in the events at the Ovĉara Farm, which took place on the
night of 20 November 1991, close to Vukovar, and during which 192
Croatian prisoners of war were executed. This latter conviction was overturned
by the Serb Supreme Court in April 2007. Milan Bulić was also
convicted for crimes at the same location on 2 March 2007. The same
event at Ovĉara Farm also resulted in a trial in 2005 in which 16 persons
had been charged for war crimes, of whom 14 were convicted for a total
of 231 years imprisonment. That result has also been overturned by the
Serb Supreme Court in December 2006. A new trial for all original 16
persons began on 13 March 2007. On 10 April 2008 Milorad Pejić, a British
citizen, was arrested in Belgrade and added as a suspect in this case. 67
On 12 March 2009, 13 were convicted in connection with these 1991
events; the 13 found guilty were sentenced to prison terms ranging from
five to 20 years.
On 27 May 2009, a special Belgrade war crimes court sentenced a
Croatian Serb, Bora Trbojević, to ten years in jail for imprisoning, torturing
and killing Croatian civilians during the country‟s war of secession
from the former Yugoslavia in 1991. Trbojević was a member of a rebel
Serb unit and was charged with crimes and killing civilians in two villages
near Grubišno Polje in eastern Croatia.
Two cases begun in 2007 are those of Sinan Morina (part of the
Orahovac group case) who was indicted on 18 July 2007 for crimes committed
in Kosovo and of Vladimir Kovaĉević who had been referred to
Serbia by the ICTY in 2006 68 and who was indicted on 30 July 2007 for
67
Trial Watch, http://www.trial-ch.org/en/trial-watch/profile/db/facts/milorad_pejic
_758.html.
68
Trial Watch, http://www.trial-ch.org/en/trial-watch/profile/db/facts/vladimir_kov
acevic_184.html.
FICHL Publication Series No. 7 (2010) – page 28