OSCE trains new staff of prosecutor’s offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina on war crimes processing

New staff of four cantonal and four district prosecutor’s offices in Bosnia and Herzegovina completed on 19 April 2013 a two-week intensive training programme on war crimes pro-cessing. The training is part of the OSCE-administered War Crimes Processing Project.

The training was organized in co-operation with the Judicial and Prosecutorial Training Cen-tres (JPTCs) and in partnership with the High Judicial and Prosecutorial Council (HJPC).

Sixteen legal advisers hired under the project to support the prosecutor’s offices were trained. The project also foresees advanced training for judges, prosecutors, police investigators and defence counsels, the provision of support staff for to the Court of BiH, the BiH Prosecutor’s Office and the Criminal Defence Section of BiH Justice Ministry, as well as financial support to cover some of the costs for witness travel, investigation and exhumation.  

The War Crimes Processing Project aims to bolster the capacities of the BiH judiciary to pro-cess war crimes cases and address the most urgent staffing and training needs of courts and prosecutors’ offices at various levels of BiH jurisdiction. The project is being implemented with the financial support of the governments of the United Kingdom, Norway, Switzerland, United States of America, and Italy and in partnership with judicial authorities in BiH and the European Union.