The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights welcomes the amendments to the Code of Criminal Procedure, which are in accordance with international standards. Although adopted without public discussion, these legal changes lead to the improvement of the work of the courts and consequently to the efficient protection of individuals. An especially important amendment abolishes the institution of mandatory detention (Art. 142 (1)), which mandated detention of any person suspected of having committed a criminal offence for which the prescribed penalty was forty years imprisonment. (more…)

The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights expresses its concern at the high level of hatred towards minorities in our society, particularly the frequent eruptions of intolerance towards Roma people. The latest examples of this are racist inscriptions displayed in Novi Sad, Niš and Zemun, including allegations of threats to which the members of Roma people are exposed. (more…)

The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights considers the “Law on the Rights of the Accused in Custody of the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague and Members of their Families”, which was adopted by the National Assembly of Serbia on 30 March 2004, as discriminatory and therefore unconstitutional and harmful. This Law obviously violates Art. 3 of the Charter on Human Rights of Serbia and Montenegro, Arts. 13 and 22 of the Constitution of the Republic of Serbia and provisions prohibiting discrimination in international treaties ratified by our country (Art. 14 of the European Convention on Human Rights and Art. 26 on the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights). Namely, this new law grants to the persons accused before ICTY rights which are not guaranteed to citizens indicted before national courts, irrespective of the alleged criminal offence. (more…)

The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights expresses its concern regarding the raid of the military police in the premises of the Helsinki Committee for Human Rights in Serbia. The position of the military judiciary in the legal system of Serbia and Montenegro is totally unclear. Namely, Article 66 of the Constitutional Charter of Serbia and Montenegro has transferred the competencies of military courts and prosecutors to the organs of member states. Article 65 determines that member states should adapt their legislation to the Charter within 6 months. Article 24 of the Implementing Act of the Constitutional Charter provides that military judiciary will continue to exist until the adoption of a law provided for in article 66 of the Charter and mandates that this law should be past within 6 months. This law has not been adopted yet. (more…)

The Belgrade Centre for Human Rights condemns with disgust the pogrom on Serbs which is going on in many places in Kosovo. Attacks against persons, dwellings and shrines cannot be considered as transgressions of irresponsible individuals but as a part of the implementation of a previously existing plan. Politicians and other leaders of the Albanian community must feel responsible for this new attempt to expel Serbs and other non-Albanians, whish is in stark contrast to their promises that minorities in Kosovo would be protected and to their appeals to Serbs to return thereto, which now sound utterly hypocritical. (more…)

Two American organisations for the protection of human rights and a group of prominent lawyers from all around the world addressed the US Supreme Court asking for the legal protection for prisoners in the American naval base in Guantanamo. The Center for Justice and Responsibility and the International League for Human Rights, along with seventeen lawyers, among  them Professor Vojin Dimitrijević, Director of the Belgrade Centre for Human Rights, addressed the court by amicus curie statement. They intervened on behalf of the accused in the procedure brought against the group of prisoners of war from the conflict in Afghanistan, demanding legal protection for their rights. The courts in America declared the case inadmisible claiming that the Guantanamo base territory formally belongs to Cuba. In appeallingthis decision it is said that the prisoners of war are under the US jurisdiction according to all international standards and that their human rights must not remain without legal protection.