Twenty-seven years later, no one has yet taken responsibility for the crime which occurred in 1992 where Bosniak and Muslim refugees were deported. The Montenegrin courts failed to apply the standards of international law in this case. This was concluded at the panel discussion “The Deportation 1992 Post Factum” organised by the Human Rights Action in the EU Info Centre. The former judge of the European Court for Human Rights, Nebojsa Vucinic, asserted that the deportation should have been defined as a war crime. “Our courts are very creative in the interpretation of the law. They didn’t consider the context of these events. If there was no war, this wouldn’t have happened. So, you cannot ignore this fact or international standards,” specified Vucinic. Professor, Milan Popovic, considered the impunity in this case, not as a consequence of the lack of political will, but as a problem in the system. According to Tea Gorjanc Prelevic, from the Human Rights Action, the only positive development in this case is that the families of the deported individuals accepted the court’s settlement worth over €4 million. In the spring of 1992, the Montenegrin police handed over 160 refugees from Bosnia and Herzegovina, who wanted to find refuge in Montenegro in the wake of the war, to Republika Srpska.

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