Complementarity: Contest or Collaboration? - FICHL

Fewer Places to Hide? The Impact of Domestic War Crimes Prosecutions on
International Impunity
Rwandan genocide. He was convicted on 30 April 1999 of war crimes
only since Swiss law had not included the other two categories of crimes
in its legislation at that time. He was sentenced to life imprisonment. On
26 May 2000, an appeals court reduced the sentence to 14 years. 164
On 30 June 2009, the Swiss government refused to extradite a suspected
genocidaire to Rwanda citing human rights concerns.
In Austria Duško Cvjetković, a Bosnian Serb, who had been
charged with murder and genocide, was acquitted by a jury of all charges
in 1994. In another case, an investigation was instituted but not concluded
against a Croatian citizen living in Austria. In 1993, a Croatian court convicted
him in absentia for war crimes under the Croatian Penal Code and
handed down a ten-year prison sentence. The suspect moved from Austria
to Hungary and was in September 2001 extradited to Croatia where he is
currently serving his prison sentence. The Austrian case has been suspended.
Norway, which like Denmark, has a specialized war crimes unit
with prosecutors and police investigators, arrested two persons from Bosnia,
Sakib Dautović and Mirsad Repak, in May 2007. Dautović is suspected
of having committed crimes in detention camps on the territory of
Velika Kladuša. 165 Repak is linked to crimes committed against 18 Bosnian
Serb civilians detained in camp Dretelj near Ĉapljina, which was
controlled by Croatian forces (HOS) during 1992. On 10 July 2008,
charges of rape, torture, illegal internment of civilians and crimes
against humanity were laid against Repak, a 41-year old Norwegian
citizen who came from Bosnia-Herzegovina as an asylum seeker in
1993. His trial started on 27 August 2008 and he was convicted and
sentenced to five years imprisonment on 2 December 2008, although
the recently amended war crimes law was held to be partially unconstitutional
for retroactivity. On 8 March 2010, an appellate court found
Repak guilty of 13 counts of the war crimes committed against, but he
was acquitted on one count. The judgement was appealed by both parties.
A Croat, Damir Sireta, was arrested on 20 November 2006 as a result
of a Serbian arrest warrant for war crimes committed around
164 See http://www.trial-ch.org/en/trialwatch/profile/db/facts/fulgence_niyonteze_115.html.
165 See http://www.bim.ba/en/62/10/2845/.
FICHL Publication Series No. 7 (2010) – page 61