prijava
SARAJEVO, April 3 (FENA) - A non-governmental organization TRIAL International has welcomed the verdict of the Constitutional Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which establishes a violation of the right to property and the right to a fair trial of war victims related to the order to pay the expenses of the attorney's office arising from the lawsuit for damages claim.
At a session held on 22 March, the Constitutional Court of BiH adopted the appeal of the person with initials S.A., filed against the verdict of the Supreme Court of Republika Srpska and the judgment of the District Court in Banja Luka in the part of the decision on the costs of the proceedings.
The Constitutional Court of BiH found that obliging the victim of wartime rape to pay the costs of the procedure for the Attorney’s Office of Republika Srpska as a defendant in the procedure for compensation for the non-pecuniary damage that the appellant suffered was a disproportionate and excessive burden on the appellant.
Therefore, the Court established a violation of the right to property and the right under the BiH Constitution and the European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms.
S.A. was raped on multiple occasions by soldiers of the Republika Srpska Army in July 1992.
TRIAL International has been providing free legal aid to this survivor for eight years, which resulted in a conviction of the perpetrator in 2013 before the District Court in Doboj.
After the victim’s request for non-pecuniary damage was rejected with an explanation resulting from the statute of limitation in civil proceedings that was initiated in Banja Luka, and after being ordered to pay the proceedings costs in the amount of 3,000 KM, TRIAL International hired a lawyer Nedžla Šehić to act as her attorney in this strategic case for the protection of the human rights of war crimes victims, and in March 2017 an appeal was filed to the Constitutional Court of BiH, which resulted in the aforementioned verdict.
“This is a very important step for the appellant, the victim of sexual violence in the war, to which the decision primarily relates, as well as for all other war crimes victims who have found themselves in a similar situation.
Now it is the responsibility on all regular courts throughout BiH, of whom we expect that to implement this practice and finally begin removing from their practice this unacceptable and excessive burden placed on the survivors of sexual violence, former detainees and families of missing persons,” said Adrijana Hanušić Bećirović, Senior Legal Adviser at TRIAL International office in BiH.
She reminded that war crimes victims in BiH have been facing a very difficult situation for a long time in which some domestic courts demand from the survivors who initiated civil proceedings for damages claims to pay unreasonable amounts of court costs incurred due to loss of a lawsuit based on the rejection of their claims by applying statute of limitation regulations.
Unfortunately, this situation has contributed to the fact that war victims, who most often live on the margins of society and to this day carry in themselves profound traumas from the war period, undergo additional re-traumatization and live in constant fear that the courts would forcedly collect from them the requested amounts which often leads to them having suicidal tendencies.
TRIAL International for a substantial period of time has been pursuing a number of strategic activities for addressing this systemic problem of war victims in BiH, including the publication of a legal analysis of the implications of the judgment of the European Court of Human Rights in the case of Cindrić and Bešlić vs. Croatia on the practice of ordering the cost collection in proceedings in BiH, sending a joint letter to the competent institutions in BiH on behalf of than 40 civil society and victims’ organizations and associations with a request to resolve this situation, and to alarm the European and international bodies on an urgent need to tackle this problem.
(FENA) S. R.
