The decision by the Zagreb County Court in Croatia to reduce the sentence of convicted war criminal Marko Radic has caused a political storm in Sarajevo. The judgment, which cut Radic’s sentence from 21 years to 12 and a half years in prison, was handed down by the court on October 1. It amended a verdict originally delivered by a Bosnian state court in Sarajevo, which convicted Radic of crimes against humanity in March 2011.

The prosecutor at the Hague-based Specialist Chambers visited Kosovo for the first time, but Prime Minister Ramush Haradinaj said there is a sense of skepticism about the new court that will try suspects for wartime crimes, even though the court is operating under Kosovo law. Senior former Kosovo Liberation Army figures are expected to be indicted by the new court for alleged crimes—including killings, abductions, illegal detentions and sexual violence—committed during and after the war with Serbian forces, but local jurisprudence may be an obstacle to successful prosecution.

Prosecutor Serge Brammertz of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals and Vice President Gilles Carbonnier of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in Geneva to promote their cooperation in the search for persons still missing from the conflicts in the former Yugoslavia.

Bosnia's state court on Friday jailed former Bosnian Serb policeman Dragan Janjic for raping a victim identified as B-1 in the police station in Miljevina near Foca in August 1992. Under the first-instance verdict, he was jailed for seven years and ordered to pay the victims 15,000 Bosnian marks as compensation for non-material damage. “The Chamber ... found him guilty of committing rape in his capacity as member of police forces,” trial chamber chair Enida Hadziomerovic said.