Special Chamber for War Crimes at the Belgrade District Court

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The Special Chamber for War Crimes at the Belgrade District Court is a chamber of the Belgrade District Court whose task is the criminal prosecution of crimes against humanity and serious violations of international humanitarian law committed by Serbian citizens in the 1990s during the Yugoslav Wars. It was created on the basis of a law passed by the Serbian National Assembly on July 1, 2003, and began its work in October of the same year. In the legal system of the Republic of Serbia , the Belgrade District Court is the only court withWar Crimes Jurisdiction . The first proceedings before the special chamber began on March 9, 2004; a total of around 125 proceedings have been opened so far.

Legal bases

The basis for criminal prosecution by the Belgrade Special Chamber are the provisions of Serbian criminal law on crimes against humanity and violations of international law as well as the provisions of the Statute of the International Criminal Court for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on violations of international humanitarian law in the field of former Yugoslavia since 1991. The involvement of judges or prosecutors from abroad is not provided, so that it is not an international court or a so-called hybrid criminal court like the Khmer Rouge tribunal in Cambodia .

With regard to questions of substantive law , the Chamber can rely on the case law of the ICTY, but has hardly made use of this option so far. Likewise, witness statements and evidence from ICTY methods are used in trials before the chamber.

Organization and way of working

The Belgrade Special Chamber consists of two bodies, each with three judges , who are appointed by the President of the Belgrade District Court and either come from this court or are seconded by other courts. In addition, two investigating judges work for the chamber . The term of office of the judges, some of whom take part in seminars organized by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) on international humanitarian law, is four years, which is significantly longer than in most of the other chambers of Belgrade District Court.

A public prosecutor's office has been set up in Belgrade to represent the prosecution before the Belgrade Special Chamber, the chief prosecutor of which is appointed by the Serbian parliament. Appeals against decisions of the chamber will be heard in the criminal chamber of the Supreme Court of Serbia.

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