Gorjanc Prelevic: The European Court of Human Rights rejected the petition of the deportation victims due to lack of jurisdiction

Today, the European Court of Human Rights made a decision rejecting the petition of nine women, mothers, wives, sisters and daughters of the six refugees who died, who were illegally arrested by civil servants of Montenegro in May 1992 and handed over to the hostile Bosnian Serb army in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Herzegovina, to serve them as hostages. Shortly after their extradition, they were killed in the Foča camp and at another unknown location.

The representative of the petitioners, the executive director of Action for Human Rights, Tea Gorjanc Prelevic, said that she was disappointed and very worried, because this decision of the European Court of Human Rights lightly allows impunity for violations of the right to life.

"It turned out that if you hand over refugees as hostages to their enemies in another country, who then kill them, that does not mean that you "deliberately" endangered their lives, so you don't even have to conduct an effective investigation," said Gorjanc Prelevic.

She pointed out, according to the statement of Action for Human Rights, that it turned out that the state can "redeem" the criminal responsibility of its officials by paying compensation, only if it conducts criminal proceedings against them, which ends in an acquittal, even though this a verdict against the standards of international humanitarian law.

She added that the court, without sufficient explanation, took very serious and decisive positions on "that the state fulfilled its procedural obligation from Article 2 of the Convention to "investigate" the case and that in civil proceedings, in which criminal responsibility is not normally determined, and establishing in criminal proceedings that the rights of refugees have been violated, even though it does not establish anyone's responsibility."

The most disappointing, said Gorjanc Prelevic, is the assessment of the court panel not to issue a verdict, but a decision, which denies the petitioners the possibility of appealing to the Grand Council. So now this case remains as an instruction to European states on how to ensure impunity for the most serious violations of human rights.

"We will analyze the decision in detail in order to warn all interested parties about it in a timely manner," the announcement concludes.