After 20 years of the ICTY’s existence, Serge Brammertz, Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, said he was pleased to see that there is still so much interest in these issues, at least in EU circles and in the region itself. He expressed his strong belief that without accountability and without the prosecution of those responsible, no reconciliation would be possible in the region.

This has been the most difficult six months: recent decisions have changed the jurisprudence of the ICTY, not to mention people’s perception of it, Brammertz said. “As a prosecutor, I’m a party in the proceedings. When there’s an acquittal, nobody would expect a prosecutor to say ‘I’m very happy with this outcome’ if he and his team have spent two or three years presenting evidence,” he said. At the same time, he was quick to stress his professional respect for the judges’ decisions.

Brammertz explained that the initial idea was not for the ICTY to be around for 20 years, but the main reason why it has been is the long length of time it took to arrest the fugitives. He pointed out that two of the ICTY’s most important trials – of Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladić – are still on-going, even as the Tribunal is being phased down and losing staff every year.

Karadžić’s trial activities should be over by the end of 2013 and Mladić’s by the end of 2014, meaning that the trial, judgement and appeal process should be over by 2015-2016, the prosecutor explained.

The ICTY prosecutor said that the end of the Tribunal will not mean the end of the prosecutions, and added that “we’re trying to support our colleagues in the region as much as possible”. “It’s not over, despite the declining interest in the ICTY and falling political interest in national war crime prosecutions,” he insisted.

“There is less activity in finding missing persons. It would be a failure for the international community not to continue pushing in this regard,” he concluded.