Even after 34 years, Radomir Kovač and Zoran Vuković have still not been punished. Back in 1996, they were convicted of the crime against the Klapuh family, which they carried out as members of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) on the territory of Montenegro in 1993. Montenegro has done everything within its power regarding criminal accountability; it is now up to Bosnia and Herzegovina to act. We warn of the danger of a de facto amnesty for the perpetrators of this war crime.

Hasan Klapuh, his wife Ferida, and their daughter Sena were killed near Plužine in 1993, during the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina, by four members of the VRS unit “Dragan Nikolić.” The perpetrators had previously agreed, in exchange for payment, to safely transport this family from Foča out of BiH into Montenegro. It was established at trial that after crossing the border, near the Mratinje dam on the Piva River, the victims were taken out of the vehicle, shot, and pushed off a bridge roughly 100 meters high.

In one of the first war crimes trials of the 1990s in the region, in 1996 Janko Janjić, Radomir Kovač, Zoran Simović, and Zoran Vuković were finally convicted in Montenegro of the criminal offense of war crimes against the civilian population, committed against the Klapuh family, and each sentenced to 20 years in prison, while a fifth defendant, accessory Vidoje Golubović, was sentenced to eight months for failing to report a crime and its perpetrators. Golubović is the only one who served his sentence. The others were tried in absentia, as they were fugitives. None of them has spent a single day in prison for this crime. While two of the defendants have since died, two others — Radomir Kovač and Zoran Vuković — live freely in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Ahead of the 34th anniversary of the crime, the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH informed the sole surviving member of the Klapuh family that it does not intend to ensure the prosecution of Kovač and Vuković, who were convicted of this war crime in Montenegro and now live in BiH.

Previously, BiH had rejected Montenegro’s request that those convicted of the crime against the Klapuh family serve their sentences in BiH. Montenegro then forwarded the complete case file of the finally concluded proceedings against the defendants to BiH so that they could be retried there.

However, the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH now claims that it cannot prosecute those who were tried in absentia in another country once they return home. Human Rights Action (HRA) warns that this decision by the BiH Prosecutor’s Office has no basis in domestic or international law and sets a deeply troubling precedent for impunity even for the most serious crimes — one that rewards citizens of Bosnia and Herzegovina who manage to flee the country in which they committed the gravest offense.

The BiH Prosecutor’s Office invokes the argument that this is an “adjudicated matter” that cannot be reprosecuted (ne bis in idem), even though Kovač and Vuković were convicted in another country, Montenegro, and have never served their sentence under that verdict. However, there are no legal obstacles to prosecuting them in BiH: the European Convention on the Transfer of Proceedings in Criminal Matters (Article 8) allows BiH to take over the case and retry them. The only way they can be brought to justice is by being retried in BiH, since they cannot serve in BiH a sentence handed down following a trial in absentia in Montenegro, and BiH cannot extradite its own citizens convicted of war crimes to Montenegro.

This is also the conclusion reached by legal experts from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Amir Čengić and Lejla Terzimehić, published in the article “Ne bis in idem in the Context of Competing International Jurisdictions”. Although this expert opinion was submitted to the BiH Prosecutor’s Office, no response was given, apart from an unexplained notice delivered to Ferid Klapuh stating that the murder of his family cannot be reprosecuted.

So far, the remains of Ferida and Sena Klapuh have been found and identified, while the results of DNA analysis for the father, Hasan, are still pending following a repeated exhumation of bones from a makeshift grave site near the tennis courts in Nikšić.

The state of Bosnia and Herzegovina should undertake the prosecution of Kovač and Vuković, since their involvement in the crime was proven in the case file handed over by Montenegro.

Abandoning prosecution amounts to a de facto amnesty for the perpetrators — an institutional enabling of impunity for a war crime against civilians.

HRA calls on the Prosecutor’s Office of BiH to urgently reconsider its decision not to act, to take over the criminal prosecution, and to ensure that Kovač and Vuković are brought before a court in Bosnia and Herzegovina, so that, after 34 years, justice may at least be partially served.