Europe and Central Asia Summary of Amnesty International’s Concerns in the Region, January-June 2007 In January, in proceedings at the Mostar Cantonal Court, eight former members of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina were found guilty of the inhuman treatment in 1993 of Bosnian Croat detainees in the Mostar municipality, some of whom died as a result. The accused were sentenced to between one and four years’ imprisonment. In February, the Sarajevo Cantonal Court sentenced Predrag Mišković, a former member of Bosnian Serb forces, to eight years’ imprisonment for war crimes against the civilian population committed in the Sarajevo suburb of Grbavica. Predrag Mišković was found guilty of taking part in the ill-treatment and rape of a Bosniak woman in 1992. In April the trial of Kosta Kostić, a former member of Bosnian Serb forces, ended at the Brčko Basic Court with a guilty verdict and a prison sentence of 15 years. He was found guilty of having participated in the murder of 14 non-Serb civilians and in the rape of a non-Serb woman. Two other codefendants were acquitted. In May Dominik Ilijašević, former member of the Croatian Defence Council, (Hrvatsko vijeće obrane, HVO), the war-time Bosnian Croat armed forces, was sentenced at the Zenica Cantonal Court to 15 years’ imprisonment for war crimes, including for his role in the killing of 38 non-Croat civilians in the village of Stupni Do in 1993. Proceedings at the Sarajevo Cantonal Court were ongoing against a man suspected of having committed, as a member of Bosnian Serb forces, war crimes against the civilian population and prisoners of war. The indictment inter alia alleges that the suspect was involved in the beating and abduction of Vladimir and Radislav Mađura from their home in Ilidža, a suburb of Sarajevo. The bodies of Vladimir and Radislav Mađura had been exhumed and identified in 2004. 27 Enforced disappearances (update to AI Index: EUR 01/001/2007) According to estimates by the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP), over 13,000 persons who went missing during the 1992-1995 war were still unaccounted for. Many of the missing were victims of enforced disappearances, whose perpetrators continued to enjoy impunity. Progress continued to be slow in transferring competencies from the missing persons commissions of the FBiH and the RS to the national Missing Persons Institute (MPI). In May BiH Prime Minister Nikola Špirić pledged to take the necessary measures to make the MPI operational and in June the BiH Council of Ministers nominated its appointed members to the Steering Board of the MPI. In May the bodies of 28 victims were exhumed from a mass grave in Sokolac, near Sarajevo. The remains are thought to be those of non-Serb detainees of the Kula detention camp, run by Bosnian Serb authorities. In June four complete and 44 incomplete skeletons were exhumed from a mass grave in the Zeleni Jadar area, near Srebrenica. The bodies are believed to be those of victims of killings by members of the VRS in and around Srebrenica in 1995. Although in December 2006 a commission tasked with investigating the enforced disappearance of Avdo Palić had been reactivated, reported attempts to locate his mortal remains were unsuccessful. ABiH Colonel Avdo Palić had “disappeared” after reportedly being forcibly taken by VRS soldiers from the UN Protection Force compound in Žepa on 27 July 1995. He had gone there to negotiate the evacuation of civilians from the town which had just surrendered to the VRS. Right to return (update to AI Index: EUR 01/001/2007) Since the end of the war, out of an estimated 2.2 million people displaced during the conflict, more than a million refugees and internally displaced persons Amnesty International AI Index: EUR 01/010/2007