United States General Accounting Office

GAO Report to the Chairman, Committee on

Foreign Relations, U.S. Senate

June 1998 FORMER

YUGOSLAVIA

War Crimes Tribunal’s

Workload Exceeds

Capacity

GAO/NSIAD-98-134

GAO United States

General Accounting Office

Washington, D.C. 20548

National Security and

International Affairs Division

B-279546 

June 2, 1998

The Honorable Jesse Helms

Chairman, Committee on Foreign Relations

United States Senate

Dear Mr. Chairman:

The wars that followed the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1991 resulted in an

estimated 250,000 deaths, many of them civilians, and 2 million displaced

persons. According to the United Nations Commission of Experts, the

wars also involved atrocities, genocide, and other crimes against

humanity. In 1993 the U.N. Security Council created the International

Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia to investigate and prosecute

individuals responsible for these crimes. As requested, this report

(1) reviews the startup challenges the Tribunal faced and (2) assesses the

Tribunal’s capacity to carry out its mandate; that is, whether the Tribunal

has sufficient staff, facilities, and equipment needed to investigate and

prosecute individuals indicted in accordance with its statute and rules of

procedure and evidence. This report includes information as of May 14,

1998.

As discussed with your staff, we did not assess whether the Tribunal had

efficiently and effectively allocated and used its resources because to have

done so would have required access to internal documents of the Tribunal

that the United Nations did not provide to us. In addition, the United

Nations did not provide us access to certain internal budgetary and

planning information that we specifically requested. Consequently, we

cannot comment on the overall adequacy of the financial support the

Tribunal has received to carry out its mandate. Our scope and

methodology are discussed in appendix I.

Background The series of wars that occurred in connection with the breakup of the

former Yugoslavia (see fig. 1) devastated many areas within the region and

was marked by extreme violations of international humanitarian law,

including forced population movements; forcible surrenders of property;

military targeting of civilian populations; and systematic rapes, tortures,

and mass murders. Civilians often were the primary targets of military

actions, or used as human shields, resulting in thousands of deaths. Many

were driven from their homes in campaigns of terror known as “ethnic

cleansing.”

Page 1 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
B-279546 

Figure 1: Map of the Former Yugoslavia

Sarajevo

Stupni Do

Brcko

Konjic

Banja Luka

Bosanski

Samac

Omarska

Prijedor

Belgrade

Srebrenica Croatia

Croatia Slovenia

Serbia

Foca

Vitez

Bosnia and

Herzegovina

Bosnia - Federation

Bosnia - Republika Srpska

Location of Tribunal offices

Adriatic

Sea

Albania

Italy

Kosovo

Greece

Former Yugoslav

Republic of

Macedonia

Montenegro

Zagreb

Hungary

Austria

Bulgaria

Vukovar

Romania

Note: Serbia and Montenegro have asserted the formation of a joint entity known as the Federal

Republic of Yugoslavia. The United States does not recognize this entity.

Page 2 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
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On May 25, 1993, the Security Council unanimously adopted resolution

827, which established the Tribunal under chapter VII of the U.N. charter

(see app. II for a list of Security Council resolutions concerning the

establishment of the Tribunal).1

 This resolution set forth the Tribunal’s

mandate to prosecute individuals responsible for serious violations of

international humanitarian law committed on the territory of the former

Yugoslavia since January 1, 1991.2

 Fighting in Croatia had ended in

November 1995 after the Croatian government and local Serb authorities

signed an agreement on the region of Eastern Slavonia. In Bosnia

hostilities were put on hold with a cease-fire among the three warring

factions in October 1995. In December 1995 parties to the Bosnia conflict,

including Croatia and Serbia, signed the Dayton Agreement.3

 New

incidents of violence occurred in early 1998 in Kosovo, a southern region

of Serbia, that may place further demands on the Tribunal. Many

international officials and observers believe that the success of the

Tribunal is critically important to the overall international effort to bring

peace and stability to the region.

The Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was the first criminal tribunal

established as a subsidiary U.N. organization and had to rely on the

international community to help it investigate and prosecute accused war

criminals. The Tribunal lacks the capability to capture those it has indicted

as possible war criminals and must rely on others to execute its orders and

warrants, including their arrest and delivery to The Hague, the

Netherlands.4

 To carry out its mandate, the Tribunal also had to develop

an operating structure and create a legal and judicial process that could be

viewed by the international community as fair and credible.

1

Chapter VII authorizes the Security Council to take measures necessary to maintain or restore

international peace and security.

2

The area of the former Yugoslavia now comprises the countries of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, the

Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Serbia, and Montenegro. Serbia and Montenegro have

asserted the formation of a joint independent state known as the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The

United States does not recognize this entity.

3

Representatives from Croatia, Serbia, and Bosnia’s three major ethnic groups signed the Dayton

Agreement on December 14, 1995. The agreement declared Bosnia a single, multi-ethnic state and

established a multinational peace operation to help implement the agreement’s goals. A list of other

GAO products pertaining to Bosnia is provided at the end of the report.

4

Under its rules of procedure and evidence, if states refuse to comply, the Tribunal can only report

their refusal back to the Security Council. In contrast, the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal

was established in 1945 by an agreement between the victorious Allied powers. Because of the

unconditional surrender of Germany, it had the ability to gain access to any part of Germany, obtain

any witness, and make arrests. The Nuremberg Tribunal could also draw upon massive armed forces

for the trials, investigations, and other activities necessary to bring war criminals to justice.

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The Tribunal’s statute established three bodies: the judicial chambers, an

Office of the Prosecutor, and a Registry for common administrative

support. The statute also directed these bodies to conduct investigations,

issue indictments and arrest warrants, prosecute and arrange for the

defense of the accused before a three-judge panel, sentence convicted

persons, and hear appeals.5

 To carry out these tasks, the Tribunal needed

judges, a prosecutor, investigators, lawyers, and administrative support

plus a building to work in, facilities to detain suspects, and a courtroom

for proceedings before investigations could begin and individuals be

arrested and prosecuted. (See app. III for more information on the

Tribunal’s jurisdiction, organization, and process.)

To ensure its decisions are viewed as credible and withstand international

scrutiny, the Tribunal’s rules of procedure and evidence require that the

Prosecutor present enough evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable

doubt to obtain a conviction. This may require investigators to collect

thousands of pages of information, analyze the military and civilian

command structures of the various factions to establish command

responsibility, obtain physical evidence from mass graves, and locate and

interview potential eyewitnesses who are scattered throughout Europe

and the rest of the world. Under its statute and rules of procedure and

evidence, the Tribunal must protect the rights of the accused, including

the right to counsel and to be informed of any information known to the

Prosecutor that may suggest their innocence or mitigate their guilt. The

Tribunal also must try the accused “without undue delay.” The maximum

penalty that the Tribunal can impose is life imprisonment.

Results in Brief The Tribunal met its early organizational challenges and has established

the organizational structure and legal processes and procedures to

investigate and prosecute war crimes committed in the former Yugoslavia.

There are no precise measurement standards on the personnel levels or

the amount of equipment and facilities the Tribunal needs to meet its

workload, and the rate of surrender or apprehension is uncertain.

Nonetheless, based on our analysis of the Tribunal’s primary functions, the

Tribunal has insufficient investigators, judges, courtrooms, and

information processors to carry out its existing workload while ensuring

that it complies with its mandate, statute, and rules of procedure and

5

The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the Rwanda Tribunal have some

joint elements. They share the Prosecutor and the appeals chamber judges of the Tribunal. The

Security Council established the Rwanda Tribunal in November 1994 to investigate and prosecute

persons responsible for genocide and other crimes against humanity in Rwanda and neighboring

territories.

Page 4 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
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evidence. As a result, the Tribunal has suspended six investigations it

planned for 1998, has a growing backlog of unread documentary evidence,

and may be unable to try some accused in custody without undue delay. In

addition, on May 8, 1998, the Office of the Prosecutor announced the

withdrawal of charges against 14 indicted individuals because, facing a

much larger than anticipated workload, the Tribunal wanted to focus its

available resources on persons holding higher levels of responsibility.6

According to the President of the Tribunal and other experts, what

constitutes undue delay is not specifically defined, but they believe the

Tribunal’s credibility and legitimacy may be jeopardized if it cannot bring

accused in custody to trial within at least 2 years, although this time period

may vary depending on the circumstances of each case. The existing

caseload exceeds the 18 persons in custody and 5 trials the Tribunal

originally projected in its 1998 budget request, and our analysis shows the

Tribunal will need 3 years or more to try all accused currently in custody.

If more indictees are arrested or additional requirements arise, such as

investigating recent incidents in Kosovo, the Tribunal’s already

overburdened capacity in key areas will be further strained.

Our analysis of the Tribunal’s plans and available resources indicates that

it does not have the capacity to handle its current workload, and the

problem is likely to get worse. Moreover, there are significant barriers that

could inhibit efforts to quickly increase the Tribunal’s capacity, such as

the United Nations’ lengthy recruitment process and its practice of

assessing a surcharge for voluntary contributions.

Tribunal Overcame

Startup Challenges

The Tribunal started its mission with few resources and staff. The U.N.

General Assembly elected the 11 judges in 4 months, but more than a year

was required to develop judicial rules and procedures, select a Prosecutor,

acquire facilities, hire investigators, obtain a formal funding mechanism,

and secure other critical resources and staff needed to conduct its work.

The Tribunal encountered numerous startup problems and, as reported by

the United Nations’ Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS),

inefficiently used some of its resources. For example, in 1996 OIOS reported

that up to 15 guards were hired more than 6 months before the first

detainee arrived and before the construction of the detention facility was

6

The Prosecutor reserved the right to pursue the same or other charges against the 14 accused at a

later date if circumstances changed. The Prosecutor’s decision to withdraw the charges does not affect

our conclusions regarding the Tribunal’s capacity to handle its workload because the individuals

named in the motion were not in custody and therefore not part of the Tribunal’s existing workload

that formed the basis of our analysis.

Page 5 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
B-279546 

completed. Also, in March 1997, OIOS reported that the Tribunal could

achieve greater efficiencies by looking into outsourcing, cost sharing, and

pooling administrative functions.7

 Nonetheless, the Tribunal has grown

into a fully functioning organization. From 1993 to 1998, the Tribunal has

grown from an organization with 11 judges and an approved budget of

$500,000 to an approved staff level of 571 with a budget of almost

$70 million.8

Tribunal Efforts to Become

Fully Functional

The Tribunal needed rules of procedure and evidence, a Prosecutor,

judges, investigators, lawyers, administrative support, and facilities to

become a functioning international judicial body. It took 18 months after

the Security Council first authorized the creation of the Tribunal before all

the main elements necessary to carry out its mandate were in place (see

table 1).

Table 1: Dates of Key Events in

Creation of the Tribunal Event Date

Security Council authorizes creation of Tribunal and

requests Secretary General report on implementation

proposals and options

February 1993

Security Council approves the Secretary General’s report

and establishes Tribunal

May 1993

General Assembly elects 11 judges September 1993

Judges adopt rules of procedure and evidence February 1994

Tribunal hires first investigator and legal officer June 1994

First field investigation begins July 1994

First Prosecutor takes office August 1994

First indictment issued November 1994

First indictee taken into custody April 1995

First trial begins May 1996

Source: U.N. Security Council resolutions and Tribunal annual reports.

The Tribunal initially used offices provided by the International Court of

Justice in The Hague to conduct its work. In mid-1994, the Netherlands,

the host government for the Tribunal’s activities, provided the Tribunal’s

premises and a courtroom and arranged the construction of a detention

facility to house those in custody. The Netherlands continues to provide

7

In its comments on a draft of this report, the Tribunal said that guards were not contracted before

construction of the detention facility was complete and noted that the Tribunal had entered into a

number of arrangements with other organizations involving common support functions.

8

Since 1996 the Tribunal has had a 1-year, or annual, budget cycle, unlike other U.N. activities that

have 2-year, or biennial, budget cycles.

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security for the Tribunal’s facilities, judges, senior officials, accused in

custody, and witnesses.

The Tribunal also received other in-kind contributions, including

equipment such as computers, vehicles, video-delay equipment, and

personnel loaned by member states and nongovernmental organizations.9

In 1994, the United States loaned 22 personnel to the Office of the

Prosecutor—about 20 percent of the Tribunal’s staff at the time—to help

the Tribunal get started. The number of loaned staff from member states

has remained relatively constant at around 50 since 1995.

During the Tribunal’s first 2 years, it did not have a formal U.N. budget but

instead operated with funds advanced by the Secretary General from the

U.N. regular general budget with only a 6-month commitment authority.

Under this condition, the Tribunal could not enter into any long-term

commitments extending beyond its temporary budget authority. This also

meant that since the Tribunal had no permanent funding, a formal lease

for premises could not concluded until 1994, and the Tribunal could not

recruit experienced staff and personnel other than on short-term

contracts. Further, it could not purchase and install the technical

equipment necessary to start investigations.

After a lengthy debate, in July 1995 U.N. member states reached a

compromise agreement to create a special account to finance the Tribunal.

The compromise called for half of the Tribunal’s budget to be funded using

the U.N. regular assessment scale and half using the peacekeeping

assessment scale.10 Figure 2 shows the amount and source of funds for the

Tribunal’s budget.

9

Staff loaned from U.N. member states to the United Nations are also known as “seconded” or “gratis”

personnel.

10Developing countries argued that they should pay a lesser scale and that permanent members of the

Security Council should pay at the higher peacekeeping assessment scale. The United States and some

other countries argued that the Tribunal should be funded like the International Court of Justice, using

the U.N. regular budget assessment scale.

Page 7 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
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Figure 2: Sources and Amount of the Tribunal’s Budgets, 1993-98

1993

1994

1995

1996

1997

1998

$0 $20 $40 $60 $80

0.5

11

32.7

39.7

53.5

68.8

Dollars in millions

Carryover from prior years Advanced from U.N. funds Regular assessment

Peacekeeping credits Peacekeeping assessment

Sources: Compiled by GAO from U.N. financial documents.

Voluntary Contributions

Fill Critical Resource

Needs

In addition to in-kind contributions, loaned personnel, and regular budget

assessments, in September 1993 the General Assembly asked member

states and other interested parties to make voluntary cash contributions to

the Tribunal’s trust fund.11 As shown in table 2, since the Tribunal was

established and through March 1998, the cumulative voluntary cash

contributions and pledges have been about $14 million from 28 countries

and organizations.

11U.N. General Assembly resolution 47/235 (1993).

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Table 2: Voluntary Cash Contributions

to the Tribunal as of March 31, 1998 Dollars in thousands

Country Amount

Malaysia $2,500.0

United Kingdom 2,485.1

Netherlands 2,247.7

Italy 2,030.0

United States 1,190.0

Pakistan 1,000.0

Canada 988.2

European Commission 342.6

Saudi Arabia 300.0

Switzerland 230.2

Denmark 213.7

Norway 191.3

Ireland 121.8

Austria 100.0

Luxembourg 100.0

Other countries 108.6

Total $14,149.2

Note: Cash contributions do not include the value of in-kind donations.

Source: U.N. financial documents.

According to State and Tribunal officials, the Tribunal has used voluntary

contributions to finance critical resource needs. For example, in

January 1998, the Netherlands contributed $1.7 million in in-kind

contributions and the United States $1 million in in-kind contributions to

construct a second, fully equipped courtroom for the Tribunal. Previously,

the United Kingdom had contributed about $500,000 for the construction

of another courtroom. The United States also contributed $1.1 million in

March 1998 to support the Tribunal’s investigation of the Serbian attack on

ethnic Albanians in Kosovo and other investigative priorities.12

Tribunal’s Current and

Future Workloads

Exceed Capacity

Our analysis of the Tribunal’s plans and available resources indicates that

it does not have the capacity to handle its current workload, and the

problem is likely to get worse. The Tribunal will be unable to conduct the

number of investigations it planned for 1998, may be unable to begin trials

12While most of the U.S. contribution was in-kind, $400,000 of the total amount was a cash contribution

to the trust fund. Table 2 does not include this recent cash contribution.

Page 9 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
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without undue delay, and will continue to have a growing backlog of

unread documentary evidence. Moreover, as more indictees are arrested

during the year, the Tribunal’s ability to continue ongoing investigations

and ensure indictees are brought to trial without undue delay will be

further eroded. There are major obstacles to quickly expanding the

Tribunal’s capabilities, including the U.N. system’s complex recruitment

process and a surcharge assessed to donors who make voluntary

contributions.

Although the Tribunal has no specific guidelines for determining the exact

length of time after which detention is no longer lawful, the Tribunal

statute requires the Tribunal to try the accused without undue delay.

According to the Tribunal President and State Department officials,

pretrial detention longer than 2 years could be considered undue delay,

although this may vary depending on the circumstances of each case. The

ability to start trials soon after indictees are brought into custody can have

important political implications. For example, one of the important

conditions of the U.S.-negotiated surrender of 10 Bosnian Croats in

October 1997 was the U.S. commitment to support the Prosecutor’s pledge

to be ready to try some of the 10 accused within 3 to 5 months of their

surrender (as of May 1998, trials for the 10 who surrendered had not

begun). According to State Department officials, indictees are less likely to

surrender if they face the prospect of months or years in custody before

their trials begin.

Current Workload Exceeds

Capacity

Our analysis shows that, based on its current workload and capacity, the

Tribunal will be unable to undertake the number of investigations it

planned for 1998 and will take at least 3 years to complete the trials and

appeals of the accused currently in custody. The Tribunal has the capacity

to handle the workload that existed in the fall of 1997 when it submitted

its resource request for the year. As of May 14, 1998, however, 10 more

indictees had been arrested or surrendered and investigations in Kosovo

had been added—already exceeding the workload the Tribunal had

expected for the entire year (see table 3).13 Moreover, only three-quarters

of the new hires planned for 1998 will be in place by August 1998. As a

result, the Tribunal currently does not have sufficient capacity in a number

of key areas to handle its present workload.

13The Tribunal’s 1998 budget request was based on conservative assumptions about the number of

accused who would be arrested during 1998 because, according to Tribunal officials, the United

Nations had denied previous requests for budget increases based on expected increases in the number

of accused in custody.

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Table 3: Planned and Actual Tribunal

Workload as of May 14, 1998

Workload indicator

Planned workload

for 1998

Existing workload

as of May 14, 1998

Number of indicted in custody 18 26a

Number of indicted waiting to

go to trial

2-8 18

Number of trials underway 5 4

Number of trials in

preparation

4 8

Number of investigations 12b 10c

aAn additional indictee was granted provisional release for health reasons and will have to return

to the Tribunal when his trial begins.

bIn its 1998 budget request, the Office of the Prosecutor planned to conduct 12 fully active

investigations during 1998.

cAccording to the Office of the Prosecutor, none of these investigations is being carried out by a

full complement of investigators, although each is fully active to the extent that resources permit.

Six investigations have been suspended, and an unspecified number of additional investigations

have been unable to start due to lack of investigators.

Source: Tribunal 1998 budget request (U.N. General Assembly document A/C.5/52, dated

Oct. 19, 1997).

Investigators Although no standards exist on the appropriate number of investigators

for an international criminal tribunal, the Tribunal does not have sufficient

investigators to carry out its existing investigatory workload. At the time

of our visit in November 1997, the Tribunal had 41 investigators, including

loaned personnel,14 to investigate potentially thousands of serious

violations of international humanitarian law, including nearly 1,000 prison

camps and other places of detention, over 10,000 cases of rape and sexual

assault, and 187 mass grave sites identified by the U.N. Commission of

Experts.

The Deputy Prosecutor told us that the 1998 budget would provide the

Office of the Prosecutor sufficient investigators and other resources to

adequately carry out its mandate for the first time, based on its planned

1998 workload. The 1998 budget authorized 72 investigators to conduct 

12 fully active investigations and support 9 ongoing or pending trials. To

meet these goals, the Office of the Prosecutor expected to supplement its 

72 U.N.-hired investigators with up to 30 loaned staff from member states.

However, since the budget was approved, investigators have had to

support 12 ongoing or pending trials. Further, they have had to suspend

14The Tribunal’s 1997 budget authorized 36 investigator positions. At the time of our visit, 30 of these

slots were filled. Another 11 investigators were loaned from U.N. member states.

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six investigations and have been unable to begin an unspecified number of

additional investigations (see table 4). As of April 1998, the Tribunal had

39 U.N.-hired and 13 loaned investigators from member states. None of its

10 active investigations were being carried out by a full complement of

investigators, although each investigation is fully active to the extent that

resources permit. In addition, it will be several months before the new

U.N. staff approved in the 1998 budget will be on board, and the Tribunal’s

ability to use any loaned staff beyond June 1998—and thus accomplish the

goals it set out in the 1998 budget—remains uncertain in light of the U.N.

General Assembly’s September 1997 resolution to largely eliminate the use

of loaned staff at the United Nations. The resolution stated that loaned

staff should not be used as a substitute for U.N.-hired staff necessary for

the implementation of mandated programs and activities.15 However, the

U.N. Secretary General could accept loaned personnel for (1) very

specialized functions for a short period of time or (2) in cases of urgent

need or expanded mandate.16

Table 4: Planned and Existing

Workload for Tribunal Investigators

Planned

workload

Investigators

required

(as per 1998

budget)

Existing

workload as of 

May 14, 1998

Number of

investigators on

staff as of 

April 16, 1998

Criminal

investigations

12a

102 (72

U.N.-hired and

30 loaned from

member states)

10b (6

suspended)

52 (39 U.N.-hired

and 13 loaned

from member

states)

Ongoing trials and

trial preparation

9 12

aThe Tribunal planned for these investigations to be fully active.

bAccording to the Office of the Prosecutor, it can no longer make a distinction between fully and

partially active investigations. None of these investigations has the full complement of

investigators but investigations are considered fully active to the extent that resources permit.

Source: Tribunal.

Several current Office of the Prosecutor staff, former Office of the

Prosecutor staff now at the Justice and Defense Departments, and State

Department officials told us the number of investigators in the 1998 budget

was still far short of the total necessary to handle the scope of the Office

15U.N. General Assembly resolution 51/243 (1997).

16State Department officials told us that the U.N. Secretary General had agreed to allow the continued

use of loaned personnel throughout 1998. See pp. 22-24 for additional discussion and pp. 51-52 for the

State Department’s comments on this issue.

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of the Prosecutor’s work. They said that to adequately carry out its

mandate, the Office of the Prosecutor would require at least twice as many

investigators as requested in the 1998 budget. Several noted that a single

Tribunal investigation was comparable in complexity and scope to a large

criminal case in the United States, even though the entire investigative

resources for the Tribunal were significantly smaller than what would be

applied to such a case in the United States.17 One Office of the Prosecutor

official told us he had only 6 people on his investigative team, when 

35 were required to cover the scope of its work effectively. Other Office of

the Prosecutor officials told us of alleged atrocities involving hundreds of

deaths that could not be investigated due to lack of investigators. In its

1998 budget request, the Office of the Prosecutor reported that as of

October 1997, almost 60 percent of its investigative resources were

assigned to trial teams, causing the suspension of some ongoing

investigations.

The Tribunal’s investigative capacity is strained by the need to prepare

cases for trial when indictees are brought into custody. For an indictment

to be confirmed, the Office of the Prosecutor need only satisfy a judge that

there is a prima facie case for believing that a suspect has committed a

crime. However, to obtain a conviction under the Tribunal’s rules of

procedure and evidence, prosecutors need to prove guilt beyond

reasonable doubt. Consequently, after an indictee is detained and brought

to The Hague, investigators need to conduct additional work to prepare

the case for trial. The amount of additional work required to prepare for

trial depends, in part, upon the extent of the evidence collected before the

indictment18 and the amount of time that has elapsed since the indictment.

Investigators may need to locate original witnesses and ensure their

testimony is consistent with their original statements and investigate

potential defense theories.19

In general, however, the Tribunal estimates that a seven-person

prosecution team needs to be established for each pending trial, including

17According to one expert’s analysis, the cost of a recent investigation and prosecution of one Mafia

leader was greater than the Tribunal’s entire budget for 1998.

18According to the Office of the Prosecutor, indictments issued in 1995 and 1996 were based on

sufficient evidence to establish a prima facie case against the accused as provided in the rules of

procedure and evidence. Those issued after 1996 were prepared to meet a higher, trial-ready standard

of sufficient evidence to establish the guilt of the accused beyond a reasonable doubt.

19In commenting on this report, the Office of the Legal Counselor at the U.S. embassy in The Hague

said that the additional investigative work associated with the passage of time was the more important

workload factor. This suggests a possible “feedback loop” where delays in bringing a case to trial

creates additional investigative workload, which in turn, because of limited investigative capacity,

creates additional delays.

Page 13 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
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at least two investigators who have to be pulled off ongoing investigations.

Using this estimate, the Office of the Prosecutor will need 16 investigators,

or 22 percent of its U.N.-hired investigators, to handle its current pending

trial load, plus additional investigators to support ongoing trials. As more

indictees are brought into custody, more investigators will be assigned to

trial preparation, which will steadily degrade the Office of the Prosecutor’s

ability to carry out ongoing investigations. According to Tribunal and State

Department officials, the resources required for trial preparation can be

much greater for higher profile indictees. For example, these officials told

us that the Office of the Prosecutor moved over half of its investigative

staff from investigations to trial preparation when a Bosnian Croat general

surrendered to the Tribunal in April 1996.

The recent violent incidents and killings in Kosovo have also strained the

Tribunal’s investigators and highlighted the Office of the Prosecutor’s

limited ability to quickly respond to new situations that were not foreseen

in the 1998 budget. According to a senior State Department official, the

Office of the Prosecutor could not provide investigators to conduct work

in Kosovo without seriously hampering ongoing investigations and trial

preparations. As a result, the United States contributed over $1 million,

loaned a prosecutor and an investigator to the Tribunal, and sought

additional voluntary contributions and personnel from other nations.

Courtrooms As of March 1998, the Tribunal had only one courtroom to conduct its

current caseload—4 ongoing trials, 1 appeal, and various procedural and

pretrial motions associated with 8 pending trials involving 18 defendants.20

To handle this caseload, the Tribunal has to rotate the use of the single

courtroom between pretrial motions, ongoing trials, administrative

functions of the court, and appeals. The need to handle the Tribunal’s

entire caseload in one courtroom is inefficient and delays the entire

judicial process. For example, ongoing trials are frequently delayed by the

need to hear procedural or pretrial motions associated with other cases.

Such motions took up over 25 percent of available court time during 1997.

The need to rotate court time between ongoing trials, motions, and

appeals greatly increases the amount of time necessary to complete each

ongoing trial and requires those in custody for other cases to wait for

months before their trials can even begin.

20The number of pending trials is subject to change. Indictments with multiple defendants can be tried

as a single case, provided everyone listed on the indictment is in custody and the judicial chamber

hearing the case agrees. However, there is the possibility that multiple defendants on a single

indictment could receive separate trials.

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To address the need for additional courtrooms, the U.S., Dutch, British,

and Canadian governments have voluntarily provided $3.3 million to

finance the construction of two additional courtrooms—one fully

equipped to handle trials with multiple defendants, the other capable of

handling pretrial motions and appeals or trials with up to two defendants.21

The Tribunal expects to have all three courtrooms in use by the end of

June 1998;22 nonetheless, we estimated that it will still take over 2.6 years

to finish the trials and appeals of all persons currently on trial or awaiting

trial. This estimate assumes that (1) both new courtrooms will be

completed on time; (2) court will be in session 240 days a year in each

courtroom; and (3) there will be a sufficient number of judges,

prosecutors, and support elements to fully staff all three on a full-time

basis.23 As of May 1998, the Tribunal had prepared, but not submitted, a

request to the United Nations to hire additional support staff to run each

courtroom.

Judges The Tribunal’s ability to try its growing caseload in a timely manner is

limited by the lack of judges. The Tribunal’s statute sets the total number

of judges for the Tribunal at 11. The rules of procedure and evidence

require that a panel of three judges hear each case, except that a judge

who confirms an indictment cannot later sit on the panel that tries the

accused. In addition, the five members of the appeals chamber cannot

include a judge who confirmed an indictment or sat on a trial involving the

indictee who brings the appeal.24 If every convicted indictee appeals his

conviction and sentence, which has been the case thus far, each indictee

will require nine different judges. This did not pose a problem when the

Tribunal only had one trial going at a time. Now, with four trials and one

appeal underway and eight more trials pending, the Tribunal’s ability to

assign judges to cover the growing caseload has been strained to capacity.

For example, as of March 1998, one judge was assigned six different cases,

creating serious scheduling problems.

21The courtroom for trials uses highly technical equipment to allow the display of evidence and to

shield the identity of witnesses who prefer to testify confidentially. Pretrial motions and appeals do

not necessarily require such elaborate equipment.

22On May 5, 1998, the Tribunal inaugurated the first of the new courtrooms.

23It will take the Tribunal about 3.7 years if court is in session for the same number of days (166) as it

was in 1997.

24In commenting on a draft of this report, the Tribunal noted that it is “an essential element of a fair

process . . . that Judges . . . not sit in more than one of [these] three capacities [so they] cannot be in a

position to review their own decisions. . . .”

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No matter how many courtrooms, investigators, attorneys, and translators

or how much support it has, under the Tribunal’s current judicial rules and

procedures it can conduct no more than 3 trials at the same time with 

11 judges. However, this would mean the appeals chamber could not be

constituted at the same time. Our analysis of this best-case scenario

showed that the chambers could complete five trials a year, assuming

court is in session 240 days a year, and each trial takes 130 court days25

(including pretrial motions and appeals). However, the Tribunal will have

only two trial chambers. This will enable the Tribunal to conduct no more

than two simultaneous trials without hindering appeals proceedings.

Therefore, under the same assumptions, it will only be able to complete

three trials per year. At that rate, it will take more than 3 years to clear the

current caseload.

To handle its planned caseload for 1998, the Tribunal assumed its 

11 judges would have dramatically increased workloads. For 1998, it

assumed the chambers would handle more than twice as many trials; issue

twice as many motions, orders, and warrants; and keep court in session

240 days—a 41-percent increase over 1997. However, as of March 1998, the

number of pending trials already exceeds what was planned for the year.

The President of the Tribunal told us she was concerned about the judges’

ability to handle their growing workload, noting the draining nature of the

subject, the unprecedented nature of the legal issues involved, and the

requirement to create and revise the rules of procedure and evidence. In

her view, the Tribunal needs at least a reserve of judges who can cover

trials if the need arises. Since the number of judges for the Tribunal was

established by the U.N. Security Council,26 the Security Council would

have to approve an increase in the number of judges.

In light of these concerns, in February 1998 the President of the Tribunal

asked the Security Council to authorize four more judges. This would

allow the creation of a third trial chamber and provide greater flexibility to

assign judges to trial and appeal chambers as needed. On May 13, 1998, the

Security Council passed a resolution authorizing three additional judges

for the Tribunal.

25These figures are based on the Tribunal’s estimate of the length of pretrial, trial, and appellate

proceedings.

26Article 12 of the Tribunal Statute sets the number of judges at 11. U.N. Security Council resolution

827 (1993) approved the Secretary General’s report on the Tribunal, which included the Statute as an

annex.

Page 16 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
B-279546 

In addition, the appeals chamber also hears and decides appeals that come

from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. A State Department

official told us that five judges will have to travel to Africa to hear and

decide on two pending appeals sometime later in 1998. This has the

potential to further disrupt the Tribunal’s ability to handle its current

caseload, although we were unable to quantify the impact of this

requirement.

Information Backlog The Tribunal has collected an immense amount of evidence and

information on war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. By the end of 1997,

the Tribunal’s documents showed it had obtained nearly 1.5 million pages

of documents, 12,000 photographs, 1,500 videos, and 47 cubic yards of

physical evidence. However, the Tribunal has been unable to translate,

process, analyze, and use this information throughout the organization. By

the end of 1997, less than half of this information had been indexed,

summarized, and entered into Tribunal computer information

systems—leaving an information backlog of over 800,000 pages of

documents, about 9,000 photographs, and so much unviewed videotape we

estimated it would take one person over 2 years to watch.

Sustaining such a huge information backlog means the Tribunal is

unaware of all the evidence it has obtained. Evidence vital to ongoing or

planned investigations may be sitting in boxes, unread or unviewed. Not

only may the Prosecutor’s ability to construct a case be limited, but also

evidence of potential benefit to the defense may not be known at the time

of a trial. Under Tribunal rules of procedure and evidence, the Prosecutor

is required to disclose to the defense any evidence it is aware of that may

suggest the innocence or mitigate the guilt of an accused or affect the

credibility of prosecution evidence. Although Tribunal officials told us that

the most important evidence and information already had been processed

into the system, some staff were concerned that exculpatory evidence

might not be discovered until after a trial was completed.

The Tribunal has a computer database with summary information on all

documents obtained to date, which investigators and attorneys use to get a

general idea of the information on hand. Defense teams use information

extracted from this database in preparing cases for their clients. In early

1997, the Tribunal estimated it had about 560,000 pages of documents

collected by its investigators waiting to be indexed, summarized, and

entered into this system. To help clear this backlog, the Dutch government

provided $2 million to fund a team of 20 staff to index and summarize

these documents. The Tribunal anticipates that the Dutch-funded project

Page 17 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
B-279546 

will have entered summaries of all this information into the Tribunal’s

computer system by June 1998.

While this project has been addressing the backlog that existed in early

1997, the Tribunal receives new information at the rate of 20,000 pages of

documents a month, which it has been unable to process. The Office of the

Prosecutor refers to this additional information backlog as its “frontlog.”

We estimate that, as of April 1998, it amounted to about 260,000 pages of

documents. The Office of the Prosecutor expects that the additional

resources provided in the 1998 budget will allow it to eliminate this new

backlog at a rate of between 14,000 to 18,000 pages per month. However,

with these new resources devoted to eliminating this new backlog, it is

unclear how the Office of the Prosecutor will be able to process the

additional 20,000 pages of documents obtained each month. In addition,

over 600,000 pages of archived and other documents obtained from other

organizations have never been processed into the system. The Office of the

Prosecutor also has no capability to process nearly 500,000 pages of

documents it expects to receive during 1998 from the archives of the U.N.

Peace Forces. In January 1998, the Deputy Prosecutor concluded that the

Office of the Prosecutor’s inability to process these collections will create

additional backlogs.

After being summarized, selected documents critical to ongoing

investigations or trials are fully translated, scanned, and entered into a

more complex database that shows links between documents, persons,

and organizations. These links are critical for developing chain of

command and command authority portions of indictments. As of

January 1998, about 60,000 pages of documents were waiting to be entered

into this system. According to the Office of the Prosecutor, a project

funded by the International Committee of the Red Cross will help

eliminate half of this backlog by the end of June 1998 and could entirely

eliminate the backlog by the end of October 1998 if additional funding is

secured. The Office of the Prosecutor also estimates that when 1998

approved staff levels are reached, the Tribunal believes it will have enough

resources on hand to keep up with the 1,500 pages of new information

coming in from investigators every month for entry into the more complex

database. However, the Office of the Prosecutor will not have enough staff

to be able to enter new information obtained from other sources.

In commenting on a draft of this report, the Prosecutor said that our report

could raise concerns that the information backlog may cause a miscarriage

of justice. While deploring the lack of available resources for backlog

Page 18 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
B-279546 

processing, the Prosecutor said that she and her staff take all possible

initiatives to ensure that the Tribunal’s ability to deliver justice is not

harmed and does not believe that the backlog has tainted the Tribunal’s

process. In addition, the Prosecutor noted that the Tribunal’s rules of

procedure and evidence allow for the review of judgments in the event

new information is discovered after trials are completed.

Additional Arrests Could

Overwhelm the Tribunal

With the Tribunal’s May 8, 1998, announcement that it was withdrawing

indictments for 14 individuals, there are currently 32 known indicted

persons still at large and an unknown number of persons whose

indictments are under seal (see app. IV for the status of publicly indicted

individuals). A series of recent events has made it more likely that there

will be significant increases in the Tribunal’s future workload before the

end of 1998. First, international military forces in the region have begun

detaining individuals indicted by the Tribunal, including those listed in

public and sealed indictments. Since June 1997, international military

forces in Bosnia and Croatia have detained seven indictees and killed

another who resisted apprehension. North Atlantic Treaty Organization

officials have said that Stabilization Force (SFOR) troops in Bosnia will

continue to detain individuals indicted by the Tribunal that they encounter

during the course of their normal duties if the tactical situation permits.27

Second, in January 1998, the National Assembly of Republika Srpska

elected a new, moderate Prime Minister, Milorad Dodik, who announced

that his government would strictly implement the Dayton Agreement,

including cooperating with the Tribunal to the extent permitted by the

Republika Srpska constitution.28

Our analysis suggests that an increase in the number of indictees in

custody during the year will overwhelm the Tribunal’s ability to conduct

ongoing investigations and handle trial preparations with its 1998 resource

level. If arrests and surrenders continue throughout 1998, the Tribunal

would likely have to close down ongoing investigations, transfer

investigators to trial preparation, and seek significant additional donor

27See Bosnia Peace Operation: Pace of Implementing the Dayton Agreement Accelerated in Mid-1997

(GAO/NSIAD-98-138, June 2, 1998) for further details about the status of arrests and surrenders of

indicted war crimes suspects.

28While Dodik has stated that his government will encourage individuals indicted by the Tribunal to

voluntarily surrender, his ability to carry out his pledges is hindered by his lack of control over police

and military in some parts of Republika Srpska. Dodik has also said his government will not arrest and

extradite individuals indicted by the Tribunal because the Republika Srpska constitution does not

permit such action.

Page 19 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
B-279546 

support—particularly if high-profile indictees such as Radovan Karadzic or

a large number of lesser indictees are taken into custody.

An increase in the number of indictees in custody will create other

problems for the Tribunal. It will have to find additional space and guards

to keep them in custody. In April 1998, the number of indictees in custody

(26) exceeded the capacity of the Tribunal’s detention facility (24). In

response, the Dutch government agreed to provide the Tribunal additional

detention capacity. As required by the statute, indigent indictees also have

the right to free defense counsel. According to a senior State Department

official, an increase in the number of those in custody would seriously

strain the existing capabilities of the two-person staff in the defense

counsel unit, which arranges for and provides support to defense

attorneys, and the Tribunal could require additional funding to expand this

unit. An increase in the number of indictees preparing for trial also would

place a heavy burden on the Office of the Prosecutor’s computer support

staff. Under Tribunal rules, the prosecutor must provide defense counsel

access to all information relevant to the indictees. For example, Tribunal

figures showed that discovery searches for the first three trials took

between 117 and 200 days. Officials in the information and evidence

section told us that these searches placed such a great strain on the

computer system that other users were unable to print documents without

a 30- to 40-minute delay.

The impact of an increase in the number of indictees in custody on the

prosecution would depend on the number of indictments (and thus

roughly the number of pending trials) in which the indictees were

included. In the Tribunal’s 1998 budget request, the Office of the

Prosecutor said it required two attorneys, one legal officer, and one case

manager for each pending trial. However, the Tribunal’s 1998 budget

request only provides for two trial preparation teams.29 The Office of the

Prosecutor also told us that on average it had to transfer two investigators

from ongoing investigations to assist in trial preparations per indictment.30

 Tribunal and State Department officials said that, depending on the

number of additional pending trials, the need to transfer additional

investigators to trial preparation would significantly disrupt ongoing

29The budget for 1998 also provides for four trial teams. Trial preparation teams will become trial

teams once preparatory work is completed and trial activities commence.

30Since an average of four persons is listed per indictment, an arrest or surrender strategy designed to

minimize the number of trials could lessen the workload impact on the Tribunal.

Page 20 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
B-279546 

investigations.31 Without additional staff, courtrooms, and judges, the

indictees would have to wait for the Tribunal to dispose of its current trial

caseload—a likely 3-year project with current resources—before their

trials begin. Finally, U.S. officials said that, if more investigators and

attorneys were added to deal with the influx, the Tribunal also would

require greater overall administrative help in such critical areas as

translation and victim and witness support.

Challenges to Increasing

Capacity

We noted that there are several administrative barriers that could inhibit

efforts to quickly increase the Tribunal’s capacity. For example, the

Tribunal must comply with U.N. rules for recruitment. According to State,

U.N., and Tribunal officials, the complex U.N. process for locating,

selecting, and placing new staff in The Hague can take many months.

Recruitment for U.N. positions must include global notification, screening

for necessary skills, and compliance with geographic and gender diversity

requirements. In an effort to speed this process, the U.N. Secretariat has

granted the Tribunal nearly complete control over recruitment.

Nonetheless, the Registry, which provides administrative support for the

Tribunal, told us it expected it would take about 3 months from the time a

position vacancy is posted before new staff are actually in place at The

Hague. However, State and Tribunal officials who have had experience

with this process told us that it actually takes 6 to 12 months to identify

candidates and bring him or her on board.

Surcharge Another barrier is the United Nations’ surcharge on voluntary

contributions. Voluntary contributions to U.N. programs administered and

managed by the U.N. Secretariat, such as the Tribunal, are charged a

13-percent overhead surcharge for cash and in-kind contributions, such as

loaned personnel.32 According to the U.N. Under-Secretary-General for

Management, a 1980 U.N. General Assembly resolution does not allow the

United Nations to use funds from its regular budget to support the costs

incurred by voluntary contributions from member states.33 U.N. officials

told us that the surcharge is necessary to recoup the administrative costs

involved in supporting the equipment and staff contributed by member

states, although in commenting on this report, the United Nations said that

31In January 1998, the Deputy Prosecutor wrote that the transfer of resources (investigators) from

investigations to trial preparation during the course of 1997 had “. . . progressively eroded” the “. . .

investigative aspect of the [Tribunal’s] mandate. . . .”

32Cash contributions funds are maintained in a special U.N. trust fund account and are available to the

Tribunal when it asks U.N. headquarters to release the money for specific activities.

33U.N. General Assembly resolution 35/217 (1980).

Page 21 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
B-279546 

the surcharge can be waived if a contribution does not involve additional

costs to the United Nations.

The surcharge can deter potential donors. For example, because of the

surcharge, the United States significantly reduced the number of U.S.

loaned staff from 22 in 1994 to 7 in March 1998. The Defense Department

has never agreed to pay the surcharge and, as a result, in December 1996,

removed the staff it had loaned to the Tribunal. Defense Department

officials likened the surcharge to paying tax on a gift, and the Department

will not loan staff to the Tribunal unless the United Nations drops the fee

or the State Department pays the 13-percent U.N. surcharge. The Federal

Bureau of Investigation also refused a December 1997 Tribunal request to

loan investigators to the Tribunal until the State Department agreed to pay

the surcharge or the United Nations agreed not to impose it. These

interagency negotiations delayed the delivery of U.S.-loaned staff to the

Tribunal by several months. According to a senior State Department

official, in March 1998 the U.N. Secretary General and the Secretary of

State discussed this issue. The official said that the Secretary General

indicated his agreement with the U.S. position and would address the

issue. The State Department took this to mean that the United States

would no longer be billed for the voluntary contribution surcharge. In

commenting on this report, the U.N. Under-Secretary-General for

Management clarified the Secretary General’s comments during the

meeting, and said that the Secretary General did not announce a change in

the United Nations’ policy on the surcharge, but only indicated that

adjustments might be possible.34

Loaned Staff The use of loaned staff at the United Nations has also been a controversial

issue for a number of years. In September 1997, the General Assembly

passed a resolution calling on the Secretary General to phase out at the

earliest possible date the use of most loaned personnel at the United

Nations.35 U.N. documents show that developing countries in particular

dislike the practice because, in part, they see it as damaging potential

employment opportunities for their nationals. They also see the practice as

34In March 1998, after meeting with the Secretary of State, the Secretary General reported on the U.N.

method for applying administrative costs to loaned personnel and cited two conditions under which

there would be no surcharge. First, assessed budgets could include a limited number of posts for very

specialized functions for which gratis personnel might be needed. If the budget were approved, these

personnel would be considered U.N. staff and not subject to a surcharge. Second, if temporary and

urgent assistance were needed for new or expanded mandates, gratis personnel would be required for

short durations and not be subject to a surcharge.

35U.N. General Assembly resolution 51/243 (1997).

Page 22 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
B-279546 

a means for the wealthy countries to influence the United Nations unfairly,

according to these documents and a former U.S. official.

As of February 1998, 9 governments and 3 nongovernmental organizations

had loaned about 50 personnel to the Tribunal, including 5 from the United

States, primarily prosecutors from the Department of Justice. The Tribunal

is expected to gain additional loaned personnel from U.N. member states

for the first 6 months of 1998 to help the Tribunal handle its increasing

workload, until new staff hired with funds from the 1998 budget are

brought on board. Although there are provisions for continued use of a

limited number of specialized positions that cannot be filled through the

U.N. recruitment system, the Tribunal’s 1998 budget assumed that its

entire complement of loaned staff would be gone by the end of the year. In

commenting on this report, the Registrar said that, in accordance with the

instructions of the General Assembly and the Secretary General, the

Tribunal is taking steps to phase out virtually all of its loaned personnel by

the end of June 1998.36 However, according to State Department officials,

the Secretary General told the Secretary of State in a March 1998 meeting

that he would find a way to address the issue of restrictions on the

continued use of staff loaned to the Tribunal. State Department officials

told us that as of May 4, 1998, the United States had sent two additional

loaned personnel to the Tribunal and plans to send at least eight more.

If the use of loaned staff is discontinued, the Tribunal would lose vital

expertise in areas such as investigations and forensics that are needed to

conduct the Tribunal’s work, according to Tribunal and U.S. officials.

Discontinuing the use of loaned personnel also would remove an

important tool the Tribunal has used in the past to obtain skilled personnel

for key positions quickly. U.S. officials told us that loaned staff are the best

way for the Tribunal to quickly obtain the highly skilled personnel

necessary to handle its complex investigations and prosecutions. For

example, the Tribunal’s ability to rapidly send investigators to Kosovo will

rely on loaned staff from the United States and other countries. In

addition, three out of four of the attorneys that prosecuted the first trial at

the Tribunal were loaned staff. According to U.S. officials, as a result of

the Secretary of State’s discussions with the U.N. Secretary General, the

Tribunal would be allowed to continue to use loaned personnel. According

to State Department officials, the General Assembly resolution that calls

for the discontinuation of loaned personnel contains exceptions that

appear to fit the circumstances of the Tribunal.

36Exceptions to this general policy will be made for loaned personnel who (1) had agreements in place

before the General Assembly decision was made in October 1997 or (2) have expertise vital to the

Tribunal’s work.

Page 23 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
B-279546 

Conclusions After overcoming significant startup challenges, the Tribunal has begun to

successfully investigate and prosecute war criminals. However, the

Tribunal has insufficient investigators, judges, courtrooms, and

information processors to carry out its existing workload because the

recent increase in the number of detainees exceeds what the Tribunal

planned for in its 1998 budget request. The Tribunal’s capacity to carry out

its primary functions will become more strained as more indicted are

brought into custody. As a result, with its current capacity, the Tribunal

will be unable to perform all of the investigations it planned for the year or

ensure that trials begin without undue delay. If arrests and surrenders

continue throughout 1998, the international community will likely have to

provide additional support to the Tribunal to ensure it can maintain its

legitimacy.

Agency Comments

and Our Evaluation

The Departments of State and Defense, the Tribunal, and the U.N.

Under-Secretary-General for Management provided written comments on

a draft of this report. State and Defense generally concurred with the

report. State, the Tribunal, and the U.N. Under-Secretary-General for

Management described their views on the merits of the United Nations’

policy on imposing a surcharge on cash and in-kind voluntary

contributions and its application to contributions to the Tribunal. In some

cases, these views differ and we added information to the report to reflect

their respective positions. We did not assess the merits of the surcharge

policy, but rather focused on its impact on efforts to increase the

Tribunal’s capacity. The Tribunal and the U.N. Under-Secretary-General

for Management also provided comments which we have incorporated in

the report as appropriate. The comments of the Departments of State and

Defense, the Tribunal, and the U.N. Under-Secretary-General for

Management along with our evaluation of them are reprinted in their

entirety in appendixes V through VIII, respectively.

We are sending copies of this report to other appropriate congressional

committees, the Secretaries of State and Defense, the U.N. Secretary

General, and the President of the Tribunal. Copies will also be made

available to other interested parties upon request.

Page 24 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
B-279546 

Please contact me at (202) 512-4128 if you or your staff have any questions

concerning this report. Major contributors to this report are listed in

appendix IX.

Sincerely yours,

Benjamin F. Nelson

Director, International Relations

 and Trade Issues

Page 25 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Contents

Letter 1

Appendix I 

Objectives, Scope,

and Methodology

30

Appendix II 

U.N. Security Council

Resolutions

Pertaining to the

Establishment of the

Tribunal

36

Appendix III 

The Tribunal’s

Jurisdiction,

Organization, and

Process

37

Tribunal’s Jurisdiction 37

Tribunal’s Organization 38

Tribunal’s Process 40

Appendix IV 

Status of Publicly

Indicted Individuals

as of May 14, 1998

43

Appendix V 

Comments From the

Department of State

51

Page 26 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Contents

Appendix VI 

Comments From the

Department of

Defense

53

Appendix VII 

Comments From the

International Criminal

Tribunal for the

Former Yugoslavia

54

Appendix VIII 

Comments From the

U.N. Under-SecretaryGeneral for

Management

65

Appendix IX 

Major Contributors to

This Report

69

Related GAO Products 70

Tables Table 1: Dates of Key Events in Creation of the Tribunal 6

Table 2: Voluntary Cash Contributions to the Tribunal as of

March 31, 1998

9

Table 3: Planned and Actual Tribunal Workload as of May 14,

1998

11

Table 4: Planned and Existing Workload for Tribunal

Investigators

12

Table I.1: Examples of Tribunal Workload Indicators 32

Table I.2: Tribunal’s Estimates of Necessary Capacity for Certain

Tasks

33

Table IV.1: Tribunal Indictments Made Public as of May 14, 1998 43

Page 27 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Contents

Table IV.2: Status of Persons Whose Indictments Were Made

Public as of May 14, 1998

46

Figures Figure 1: Map of the Former Yugoslavia 2

Figure 2: Sources and Amount of the Tribunal’s Budgets, 1993-98 8

Figure III.1: Tribunal Organization Chart 38

Figure III.2: Tribunal’s Process 41

Abbreviations

OIOS Office of Internal Oversight Services

OTP Office of the Prosecutor

SFOR Stabilization Force

Page 28 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Page 29 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix I 

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

This report (1) reviews the startup challenges the Tribunal faced and

(2) assesses the Tribunal’s capacity to carry out its mandate; that is,

whether the Tribunal has sufficient staff, facilities, and equipment needed

to investigate and prosecute individuals indicted in accordance with its

statute and rules of procedure. We included information as of May 14,

1998.

To review the startup challenges of the International Criminal Tribunal for

the former Yugoslavia, we consulted Tribunal annual reports and press

releases, budget resolutions from the United Nations’ Fifth Committee and

Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, and

budget documents from the U.N. Secretariat. We also met with State

Department, U.N., and Tribunal officials to discuss how the Tribunal was

created and how its current structure and operations evolved over time.

To assess the Tribunal’s capacity to carry out its mandate, we measured its

capacity in four areas—investigators, courtrooms, judges, and information

processing—that (1) were central to the Tribunal’s ability to perform its

mission and (2) we were best able to assess from the available

documentation. The Tribunal’s annual reports and 1998 budget request

contain detailed information on these four areas that we supplemented in

follow-up discussions with Tribunal officials. We did not assess the

Tribunal’s administrative functions.

To obtain the information necessary to assess the Tribunal’s capacity, we

met with Tribunal officials at The Hague, the Netherlands, including the

President of the Tribunal, the Registrar, and the Deputy Prosecutor; and

with officials from the U.S. embassy in The Hague; the U.N. Secretariat;

the U.N. Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS); the Department of

State in Washington, D.C.; and the U.S. Mission to the United Nations in

New York City. We also spoke with a number of officials from the U.S.

Departments of Justice and Defense who had worked at the Tribunal on

loan from the United States. We obtained documents and reports from the

Departments of State, Justice, and Defense that pertained to the Tribunal.

We also obtained and reviewed a number of U.N. and Tribunal documents,

including the Tribunal’s annual reports and press releases, budget

resolutions from the United Nations’ Fifth Committee and Advisory

Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions, budget documents

from the U.N. Secretariat, and OIOS reports about the Tribunal.

Because we are an agency of the U.S. government, we do not have audit

authority to review the operations of the United Nations and the Tribunal.

Page 30 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix I 

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

Although Tribunal officials consented to our study and were helpful and

forthcoming in our discussions, the United Nations and the Tribunal did

not provide us with the internal documents that would have enabled us to

assess how effectively or efficiently the Tribunal has used its available

financial resources. Reports from the OIOS indicate that this may have been

a problem. Without such access, we were unable to review the overall

adequacy of the Tribunal’s financial resources nor could we determine

whether the Tribunal could have more efficiently and effectively allocated

them. For example, we did not have access to internal Tribunal documents

that detailed the assumptions and rationales behind its 1998 budget

request, nor could we review Tribunal financial records to determine

whether allocated funds were being fully or effectively used in all areas of

the operation.

Nonetheless, we were able to compare the Tribunal’s current and future

workload with its capacity in its key investigative, prosecutorial, and

judicial functions. As part of its 1998 budget request, the Tribunal

developed 113 indicators such as number of ongoing trials and number of

courtrooms to measure its workload, establish goals, and judge

performance. We used some of these indicators to measure the Tribunal’s

current and future workload. Table I.1 shows some additional examples of

these indicators.

Page 31 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix I 

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

Table I.1: Examples of Tribunal

Workload Indicators Indicator Level in 1996 Level in 1997 Projected for 1998

Ongoing trials 1 2 5

Pretrial motions,

orders, and

applications

152 100 200

Number and status 

of investigations

28 (9 active;

10 partially active; 

3 suspended;

6 completed)

10 (3 active;

7 partially active)

12 (12 fully active)

Witnesses 

interviewed

1,693 2,300 4,600

Number of documents

in OTP evidence

collection

68,000 113,000 161,000

Detainees 

(average)

4 20 18

Pages translated 

per year

27,300 29,500 40,000

Court sessions

supported

131 183 309

Legend

OTP = Office of the Prosecutor.

Source: Tribunal’s 1998 budget request.

Since the Tribunal is an unprecedented body with a unique mandate, there

are few recognized standards or criteria for critical aspects of its

operations, such as how many investigators are required per investigation,

how many attorneys are necessary for preparing an indictment, how many

people the Tribunal needs to indict, and how long it should remain in

operation. However, the Security Council resolutions that established the

Tribunal, its statute, and its rules of procedure and evidence provide a

series of requirements for the Tribunal and its judicial process. For

example, each trial must be heard by three judges and the accused have

the right to be informed of any evidence known to the Prosecutor that may

suggest their innocence or mitigate their guilt and to be tried without

undue delay. We performed our assessment by determining whether the

Tribunal had sufficient capacity in key areas to be able to comply with

these criteria.

The ability to ensure that trials begin without undue delay is particularly

important. However, the Tribunal has no specific guideline for determining

the exact length of time which constitutes undue delay. In a

Page 32 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix I 

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

September 1996 decision, a Tribunal trial chamber found that applying the

“without undue delay” standard depends on individual circumstances and

cited seven factors enumerated by the European Commission of Human

Rights that should be considered when making that determination.1

 These

factors include the seriousness of the offense, the difficulties in

conducting the investigation, and the impact of detention on the indictee.

In that decision, the Tribunal ruled that a detainee’s 4-month detention

before the start of his trial could not, in the circumstances of that case, be

considered undue delay. The Tribunal President and State Department

officials generally considered that pretrial detention longer than 2 years

could be considered undue delay, although this may vary depending on the

circumstances of the case.

To examine the relationship between capacity and workload, we used

estimates the Tribunal had developed on the number of people or amount

of time necessary to carry out key tasks based on its past experience. For

example, the Tribunal assumed each trial would require 100 court days

and that one person could index between 14,000 to 18,000 pages of

information per month (see table I.2). The Tribunal used these estimates

to justify its request for funds. As such, the Tribunal’s 1998 budget request

represents its best judgment on what it needed to accomplish its

performance goals for the year. We used these estimates to calculate the

number of staff or length of time necessary to handle the Tribunal’s

current and potential workload.

Table I.2: Tribunal’s Estimates of

Necessary Capacity for Certain Tasks Task Necessary capacity

Trial 100 courtroom days

Pretrial motions 20 courtroom days

Investigation team 1 team leader, 7 investigators, 1 analyst

Trial team 3 attorneys, 2 investigators, 1 legal officer,

1 case manager, 1 trial support assistant

Summarize documents 14,000 to 18,000 pages per month, per

person

Source: Tribunal 1998 budget request.

In assessing the number of investigators, we used the Tribunal’s estimates

of the number of investigations it planned to undertake as the criteria for

measuring whether it had enough investigators. Our ability to analyze the

number of investigators was further limited because we did not have

1

Decision on Motion for Provisional Release Filed by the Accused Zejnil Delalic, Case No. IT-96-21-T

(Sept. 25, 1996).

Page 33 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix I 

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

access to specific information on the relationship between the number of

investigations and the number of investigators. Nonetheless, we

contrasted the number of investigators the Tribunal has with the number it

thought necessary to carry out the 12 investigations it planned for 1998.

We also calculated the number of investigators that would have to be

pulled off investigations to assist in trial preparation based on information

we received from the Office of the Prosecutor.

To calculate how long it would take the Tribunal to complete its current

caseload based on the number of courtrooms, we applied the Tribunal’s

standard estimates of 20 days necessary for pretrial motions, 100 days for

the trial, and 10 days for the appeals to determine the total number of trial

days. We assumed that all verdicts would be appealed.2

 We also used the

Tribunal’s 1998 budget estimates of the number of days (1) court was in

session during 1997 and (2) the Tribunal plans to have court in session in

1998. This allowed us to estimate the total number of courtroom days per

year and the total length of time necessary to complete the current

caseload.

The courtroom analysis assumed that there will be enough judges and

other staff to allow the operation of three courtrooms. With its current 

11 judges, the Tribunal can have no more than three trials going at the

same time, due to the requirement in the Tribunal’s statute that three

judges need to hear each trial. However, in practice, the Tribunal can only

hear two trials at the same time without jeopardizing its ability to

constitute an appeals chamber, since it has only two trial chambers. Using

the Tribunal’s estimate of being in session 240 days a year, we assumed

that the court could handle 480 trial days a year. If each trial takes 130

days, the Tribunal could complete about 3.7 trials per year.

Our analysis of the size of the Tribunal’s information backlog and its

ability to eliminate it was based on the 1998 budget request and

supplementary information we obtained from the Office of the Prosecutor.

Based on this information, we calculated that the Tribunal has nearly

1.5 million pages of information. We then estimated the size of the

Tribunal’s backlog based on its estimates of how quickly staff could

summarize and index documents, enter documents into the detailed

database, and scan photos into the document database. We also calculated

the number of hours of unviewed videotape based on estimates we

obtained from the Tribunal. Finally, based on figures in the 1998 budget

2

Every verdict issued to date has been appealed. The statute allows the Prosecutor or the defense to

appeal a verdict.

Page 34 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix I 

Objectives, Scope, and Methodology

request, we estimated how long it would take the Tribunal to clear its

backlog of information and whether the Tribunal would be able to keep up

with the inflow of new information during the year.

We conducted our work from September 1997 to May 1998 in accordance

with generally accepted government auditing standards.

Page 35 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix II 

U.N. Security Council Resolutions

Pertaining to the Establishment of the

Tribunal

Resolution number Date Purpose

764 July 13, 1992 Reaffirms that all parties to the conflict are

bound to comply with their obligations

under international humanitarian law.

771 August 13, 1992 Condemned any violations of international

humanitarian law and required that all

parties cease and desist from breaches of

the law. Called on U.N. member states to

report violations.

780 October 6, 1992 Established an impartial Commission of

Experts to investigate “grave breaches of

the Geneva Conventions and other

violations of international humanitarian law.

. . .”

787 November 16, 1992 Reinforced request in resolution 780 for

Commission to continue its investigative

efforts. Reaffirmed the United Nations’

condemnation of violations of humanitarian

law. Emphasized persons would be held

individually responsible.

808 February 22, 1993 Authorized the establishment of the

International Criminal Tribunal and

requested the U.N. Secretary General

report on the statute of the Tribunal within

60 days.

827 May 25, 1993 Established the Tribunal and approved the

Secretary General’s draft of the statute.

857 August 20, 1993 Established list of 23 potential judges from

which the General Assembly was to select

11.

877 October 21, 1993 First selection of Tribunal Prosecutor.a

936 July 8, 1994 Appointment of second Tribunal

Prosecutor.b

aThe first person selected as Prosecutor declined the position in early 1994 without ever taking

office.

bThe second person selected as Prosecutor was the first to actually take office.

Source: United Nations.

Page 36 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix III 

The Tribunal’s Jurisdiction, Organization,

and Process

Tribunal’s Jurisdiction The Tribunal’s jurisdiction stems from its U.N. Security Council mandate

to prosecute individuals responsible for serious violations of international

humanitarian law committed on the territory of the former Yugoslavia

since January 1, 1991. To implement its mandate, the Tribunal functions in

accordance with the provisions of the Security Council-approved 1993

statute and its set of rules of procedure and evidence. The statute

authorizes the Tribunal to prosecute persons for grave breaches of the

Geneva Conventions of 1949, violations of the laws or customs of war,

crimes against humanity, and the commission of genocide. The Tribunal

and national courts in Bosnia, Croatia, and other member states have

concurrent jurisdiction; however, the statute recognizes the Tribunal as

having primacy over those courts. Thus, the Tribunal can formally request

national courts to defer to the Tribunal at any stage in their own

investigation or prosecution of alleged war crimes.

The statute requires all U.N. member states to cooperate with the Tribunal

in the investigation and prosecution of accused war criminals. States are

required to comply without undue delay with any Tribunal request for

assistance or order issued by a trial chamber. This includes the

identification and location of persons; the production of evidence; the

service of documents; and the arrest, detention, and transfer of the

accused to Tribunal headquarters in The Hague, the Netherlands.

However, the Tribunal has no direct enforcement power if a state fails to

comply. It can only report lack of compliance to the Security Council. For

example, in July 1997, three judges from the Tribunal ruled that Croatia

and its Minister of Defense are required to comply with subpoenas

requiring them to produce documents relevant to an ongoing trial.

However, in October 1997, the appeals chamber of the Tribunal ruled that

although the Tribunal can order the production of information by states, it

has no authority to enforce those orders and must rely on the Security

Council to take action against the uncooperative state.1

 The signatories of

the 1995 Dayton Agreement, some of whom are not members of the United

Nations, also pledged to fully cooperate with the Tribunal, although the

Bosnian entity Republica Srpska, and Serbia and Montenegro have not

lived up to their pledge. The statute also provides a role for the U.N.

General Assembly in electing the judges of the Tribunal, approving the

budget, and reviewing the Tribunal’s annual reports.

1

The Tribunal’s 1997 annual report noted that it “must turn to States for the execution of its orders and

warrants. If States are ready and willing to cooperate, the Tribunal is in a position to fulfill its mission.

If States instead refuse to implement those orders or to execute warrants, the Tribunal will turn out to

be utterly impotent.”

Page 37 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix III 

The Tribunal’s Jurisdiction, Organization,

and Process

Tribunal’s

Organization

As shown in figure III.1, the Tribunal is organized into three bodies: an

Office of the Prosecutor, the judicial chambers, and a Registry for

common administrative support. In total, these bodies constitute an entire

criminal justice system. The Tribunal shares the Prosecutor and the five

members of its judicial appeals chamber with the International Criminal

Tribunal for Rwanda.

Figure III.1: Tribunal Organization Chart

The Tribunal

Office of the 

Prosecutor

Investigation 

division

Prosecution 

division

Information and 

evidence section

Judicial Chambers

Appeals chamber

Trial chambers

Registry

Judicial support

Administrative 

services

Source: Tribunal 1998 budget request.

The Office of the Prosecutor is required to both investigate and prosecute

persons responsible for serious violations of international humanitarian

law in the territory of the former Yugoslavia since 1991. The Prosecutor,

who heads the Office of the Prosecutor, is nominated by the U.N.

Page 38 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix III 

The Tribunal’s Jurisdiction, Organization,

and Process

Secretary General and appointed by the U.N. Security Council, serves a

4-year term, and is eligible for reappointment. The first acting Prosecutor

took office in July 1994, and the current Prosecutor began serving her term

on October 1, 1996. The Prosecutor selects the appropriate cases to

investigate, identifies and locates relevant potential witnesses, gathers

evidence to corroborate that criminal acts have occurred, and establishes

that those acts were crimes within its jurisdiction. The Office of the

Prosecutor operates independently of the judges of the Tribunal. The

investigation division of the Office of the Prosecutor is responsible for

conducting investigations of suspected war criminals. The prosection

division conducts the trial proceedings before the Chambers and provides

legal advice to assist ongoing investigations. The information and evidence

section is responsible for the retention, storage, security, and retrieval of

information and physical evidence and provides computer services

support. The Office of the Prosecutor also has three small offices in

Sarajevo, Zagreb, and Belgrade to support and assist investigators working

in the field. The government of Republika Srpska has also offered to allow

the Office of the Prosecutor to open a fourth office in Banja Luka.

The Judicial Chambers holds the trials and makes the ultimate

determination of guilt or innocence of the indictees. The chambers is

composed of 11 judges from 11 different countries who rotate between 

2 trial chambers of 3 judges and an appeals chamber of 5 judges. The

judges are elected by the General Assembly from a list of nominees

submitted by the Security Council for a term of 4 years and are eligible for

reelection. The President of the Tribunal, who is also a member of the

appeals chamber, is elected by the judges and assigns the judges to both

chambers, presides over the plenary meetings of the chambers, and

supervises the performance of the Registry functions. The President is also

responsible for preparing and submitting the Tribunal’s annual reports to

the United Nations and reporting instances of noncompliance by states.

The Registry provides support to the Tribunal. Its judicial responsibilities

include managing courtroom operations, providing legal support to judges,

assigning defense counsel to indigent indictees, supervising the detention

unit, protecting and supporting victims and witnesses, and recommending

protective measures and maintaining contacts with U.N. member states.

The Registry’s administrative responsibilities involve financial

administration and resource planning, human resource management,

language services, meetings and documentation services, electronic and

communications support, and building management. The Registry is also

responsible for security at the Tribunal, handling relations with the press,

Page 39 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix III 

The Tribunal’s Jurisdiction, Organization,

and Process

and providing information to the public on the Tribunal’s activities. The

Registry is headed by the Registrar, who is appointed by the U.N.

Secretary General.

Tribunal’s Process The Tribunal’s overall process for carrying out its mandate is divided into

a number of steps, as shown in figure III.2. Each step is a link in the

functions of the overall criminal-judicial process. The international

community, and not the Tribunal, is responsible for the arrest or surrender

of indictees.

Page 40 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix III 

The Tribunal’s Jurisdiction, Organization,

and Process

Figure III.2: Tribunal’s Process

Review

information

Select

targets

Prepare

indictment

Trial

preparation

Trial

Arrest/

surrender

International 

community

Sentencing/

optional appeal

Investigate

targets

Source: GAO analysis of Tribunal documents.

The process begins when the Office of the Prosecutor collects, translates,

and organizes evidence of violations of international humanitarian law.

This information comes from individuals, member states, or

nongovernmental organizations or is collected by investigators from the

Office of the Prosecutor. The Prosecutor may summon and question

suspects, victims, and witnesses; obtain their statements; collect evidence;

and conduct site investigations and other matters necessary for

Page 41 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix III 

The Tribunal’s Jurisdiction, Organization,

and Process

completing the investigation and preparing the case for trial. After

reviewing information collected during the investigation, the Prosecutor

prepares an indictment if there is sufficient evidence to provide

reasonable grounds for believing that a suspect has committed a crime

within the jurisdiction of the Tribunal. If a reviewing judge agrees that the

evidence establishes a prima facie case, the indictment is confirmed and

an arrest warrant issued. The indictee must then be located, arrested, and

transferred to The Hague by authorities other than the Tribunal.

Upon arrival in The Hague, the indictee is placed in detention, enters a

plea, and receives a trial date set by a judge. The Tribunal’s statute

requires that the trial chambers try the accused without undue delay, in a

fair and expeditious manner. During the trial, the Prosecutor and defense

present their cases to a panel of three judges; there is no jury. After the

presentation of evidence and cross-examination, the trial chamber

announces its decisions. Either the Prosecutor or defense can appeal the

decision within 15 days. If the five-member Appeals Chamber upholds a

conviction, the guilty party is transported from The Hague to serve his

sentence in a country designated by the President of the Tribunal. Italy,

Finland, and Norway have signed formal agreements with the Tribunal to

allow persons convicted by the Tribunal to serve sentences in their

national prisons.

The Tribunal’s statute and rules of evidence and procedure spell out a

series of procedural requirements and standards that the Tribunal must

comply with as it carries out each step of this process. For example, only

the Prosecutor can determine who will be investigated. Indictments must

have sufficient evidence to provide reasonable grounds for believing a

suspect has committed a crime—but the Prosecutor must eventually

collect enough information to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

Indictees are presumed innocent until proven guilty and have a number of

rights, including the right to counsel and the ability to avoid

self-incrimination, to be tried without undue delay, and to be informed of

any information known to the Prosecutor that may suggest their

innocence or mitigate their guilt. The rules of procedure and evidence also

require newly arrested indictees to appear without delay before a trial

chamber to enter a plea, which may delay ongoing trials. Ongoing trials

will not be delayed by pleas once the new courtroom room for limited trial

proceedings is completed in the spring of 1998.

Page 42 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix IV 

Status of Publicly Indicted Individuals as of

May 14, 1998

As of May 14, 1998, the Tribunal has made public 20 indictments against 

79 individuals. With the Tribunal’s May 8, 1998, announcement that it was

withdrawing indictments for 14 individuals,1

 there are currently 32 known

indicted persons still at large,2

 26 are in custody, 3 were released after

detention for lack of evidence, 3 are dead, and 1 was granted provisional

release for health reasons on the understanding that he will return to The

Hague when his trial begins. Of those in custody or on provisional release,

18 are waiting for their trials to start, 7 are currently on trial, 1 pled guilty

and has been sentenced, and another has been convicted and is waiting for

a decision on his appeal. The pace of surrenders and arrests has

dramatically increased in recent months. Twenty-two indictees—including

three later released for lack of evidence—were arrested or surrendered to

the Tribunal in the past 12 months, including eight since the beginning of

1998. Because of the reluctance of some states to hand over indicted

persons to the Tribunal, the Prosecutor has also obtained approval from

confirming judges to seal an unknown number of indictments and issue

sealed arrest warrants to other states or international military forces

willing or able to carry them out. The total number of persons listed in

these sealed indictments is unknown.

This appendix provides information on the 20 indictments made public by

the Tribunal (see table IV.1) and the status of the 79 persons named in

those indictments (see table IV.2) as of May 14, 1998. Some indictments

are named for the location of where the alleged atrocities took place and

others for the person named in the indictment.

Table IV.1: Tribunal Indictments Made

Public as of May 14, 1998 Indictment Charges

Bosanski Samac Slobodan Miljkovic and five others planned and carried

out deportations, killings, beatings, sexual assaults, and

torture against the non-Serb population of Bosanski

Samac in northeastern Bosnia.

Brcko Goran Jelisic and one other systematically killed, tortured,

sexually assaulted, and beat Bosniaka and Bosnian Croat

detainees in Brcko and the nearby Luka Camp in

northeastern Bosnia.

Celebici Zejnil Delalic and three others murdered, tortured, raped,

and beat Bosnian Serb prisoners at the Celebici Camp in

central Bosnia from late spring to fall of 1992.

(continued)

1

The Tribunal dropped the charges due to a larger than anticipated number of trials and a

prosecutorial strategy of focusing on persons holding higher levels of responsibility. The Prosecutor

stated that she reserves the right to pursue charges against the 14 accused at a later date if the

circumstances change.

2

Thirty of those still at large are Serbs.

Page 43 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix IV 

Status of Publicly Indicted Individuals as of

May 14, 1998

Indictment Charges

Drljaca and Kovacevic Simo Drljaca and Milan Kovacevic committed genocide in

the Prijedor municipality of northwestern Bosnia between

April 1992 and January 1993 by planning, organizing,

and implementing the establishment of detention camps

for the Bosniak and Bosnian Croat population.

Erdemovic Drazen Erdemovic participated in the summary execution

of hundreds of Bosniaks following the Bosnian Serb

takeover of Srebrenica in July 1995.

Foca Dragan Gagovic and seven others subjected Bosniak

women, some as young as 12 years of age, to gang rape,

systematic rape, sexual assaults, torture, and

enslavement.

Furundzija Anto Furundzija did nothing to stop the torture and rape of

prisoners near Vitez in May 1993.

Karadzic and Mladic Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic are responsible for

genocide in the unlawful confinement, murder, rape,

torture, beating, robbery, and inhumane treatment of the

non-Serb civilian population of Bosnia. Karadzic and

Mladic are also responsible for the sniping campaign

against civilians in Sarajevo and for taking U.N.

peacekeepers hostage and using them as human shields.

Keraterm Camp Dusko Sikirica and 12 others killed, sexually assaulted,

tortured, and beat Bosniak and Bosnian Croat detainees

at the Keraterm Camp near Prijedor in northwestern

Bosnia.

Kordic and others Dario Kordic and five others carried out the “ethnic

cleansing” of the Lasva Valley in central Bosnia including

the murder, wounding, detention, and use of the Bosniak

civilian population as hostages, forced labor, and/or

human shields.

Kupreskic and others Zoran Kupreskic and seven others carried out systematic

attacks in April 1993 against the town of Vitez, the village

of Ahmici, and eight other Bosniak villages in the Lasva

Valley of central Bosnia, leading to the murder or illegal

detention of many of their civilian inhabitants.

Marinic Zoran Marinic murdered four of his Bosniak neighbors

and wounded a fifth in the Bosnian Croat-controlled

village of Busovaca in central Bosnia in April 1993.

Omarska Camp Zeljko Meakic and 18 others killed, sexually assaulted,

tortured, and beat Bosniak and Bosnian Croat detainees

at the Omarska camp near Prijedor in northwestern

Bosnia.

Sarajevo Djordje Djukic planned, prepared, or otherwise aided in

the shelling of civilian targets in Sarajevo, Bosnia, from

May 1992 to December 1995.

Srebrenica Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic planned, instigated,

ordered, or otherwise aided in the mass killing of

thousands of Bosniaks following the takeover of

Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia in July 1995.

(continued)

Page 44 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix IV 

Status of Publicly Indicted Individuals as of

May 14, 1998

Indictment Charges

Stupni Do Ivica Rajic commanded the unlawful attack by the

Bosnian Croat military against the Bosniak village of

Stupni Do in October 1993, killing at least 16 civilians and

almost totally destroying the village.

Susica Camp Dragan Nikolic killed, tortured, and treated detainees

inhumanely at the Susica camp in eastern Bosnia in the

summer of 1992.

Tadic and other Dusko Tadic and Goran Borovnica persecuted the

Bosniak and Bosnian Croat population of the Prijedor

area; deported civilians to prison camps; and killed, beat,

and raped civilians within and outside the Omarska Camp

in northwestern Bosnia.

Vukovar Hospital Mile Mrksic and three others were responsible for the

killing of about 260 non-Serb men after their forcible

removal from the hospital in Vukovar, Croatia, in

November 1991.

Zagreb Milan Martic ordered the firing of cluster bombs into the

central part of Zagreb, Croatia, in May 1995.

aThis report defines “Bosniak” as “Bosnian Muslims,” the definition used in State Department

human rights reports.

Source: Tribunal publicly released indictments.

Page 45 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix IV 

Status of Publicly Indicted Individuals as of

May 14, 1998

Table IV.2: Status of Persons Whose Indictments Were Made Public as of May 14, 1998

Name Ethnicity Indictment(s) Status as of May 14, 1998

Zlatko Aleksovski Bosnian Croat Kordic and others Arrested by Croatian authorities on June 8,

1996, and delivered to the Tribunal on 

April 28, 1997. Currently in custody and on

trial at the Tribunal.

Stipo Alilovic Bosnian Croat Kupreskic and others Tribunal confirmed dead on December 18,

1997.

Mirko Babic Bosnian Serb Omarska The Tribunal dropped the charges against

him in May 1998, although it reserved the

right to reinstate charges at a later date.

Nenad Banovic Bosnian Serb Keraterm At large

Predrag Banovic Bosnian Serb Keraterm At large

Tihomir Blaskic Bosnian Croat Kordic and others Surrendered to the Tribunal in April 1996.

Currently in custody and on trial at the

Tribunal.

Goran Borovnica Bosnian Serb Tadic and other At large

Mario Cerkez Bosnian Croat Kordic and others Surrendered to the Tribunal on October 6,

1997. Currently in custody at the Tribunal,

awaiting the start of his trial.

Ranko Cesic Bosnian Serb Brcko At large

Zejnil Delalic Bosniak Celebici Arrested by German authorities on

March 18, 1996, and delivered to the

Tribunal on May 8, 1996. Currently in

custody and on trial at the Tribunal.

Hazim Delic Bosniak Celebici Arrested by Bosnian authorities on May 2,

1996, and delivered to the Tribunal on 

June 13, 1996. Currently in custody and on

trial at the Tribunal.

Djordje Djukic Bosnian Serb Sarajevo Arrested by Bosnian authorities on

January 30, 1996, and delivered to the

Tribunal. Released from Tribunal for health

reasons in April 1996 and died of cancer on

May 18, 1996.

Slavko Dokmanovic Croatian Serb Vukovar Arrested by UNTAES forces and Tribunal

authorities in Croatia on June 27, 1997, at

which time his sealed indictment was made

public. Currently in custody and on trial at

the Tribunal.

Damir Dosen Bosnian Serb Keraterm At large

Simo Drljaca Bosnian Serb Drljaca and Kovacevic Killed by SFOR forces on July 10, 1997,

while resisting detainment, at which time his

sealed indictment was made public.

(continued)

Page 46 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix IV 

Status of Publicly Indicted Individuals as of

May 14, 1998

Name Ethnicity Indictment(s) Status as of May 14, 1998

Drazen Erdemovic Bosnian Croat Erdemovic Arrested by Serbian authorities on March 2,

1996; sent to the Tribunal on March 30,

1996, as a witness; and indicted on May 29,

1996. Pled guilty on May 31, 1996, and

sentenced to 10 years on November 29,

1996. Sentence reduced to 5 years on

March 5, 1998, after successful appeal.

Currently in custody at the Tribunal, awaiting

a decision on where he will serve his

sentence.

Anto Furundzija Bosnian Croat Furundzija Detained by SFOR forces on December 18,

1997, at which time his sealed indictment

was made public. Currently in custody at the

Tribunal, awaiting the start of his trial.

Dragan Fustar Bosnian Serb Keraterm At large

Dragan Gagovic Bosnian Serb Foca At large

Zdravko Govedarica Bosnian Serb Omarska The Tribunal dropped the charges against

him in May 1998, although it reserved the

right to reinstate charges at a later date.

Goran Gruban Bosnian Serb Omarska The Tribunal dropped the charges against

him in May 1998, although it reserved the

right to reinstate charges at a later date.

Momcilo Gruban Bosnian Serb Omarska At large

Janko Janjic Bosnian Serb Foca At large

Nikica Janjic Bosnian Serb Omarska, Keraterm The Tribunal dropped the charges against

him in May 1998, although it reserved the

right to reinstate charges at a later date.

Gojko Jankovic Bosnian Serb Foca At large

Goran Jelisic Bosnian Serb Brcko Detained by SFOR forces on January 22,

1998. Currently in custody at the Tribunal,

awaiting the start of his trial.

Drago Josipovic Bosnian Croat Kupreskic and others Surrendered to the Tribunal on October 6,

1997. Currently in custody at the Tribunal,

awaiting the start of his trial.

Radovan Karadzic Bosnian Serb Karadzic and Mladic,

Srebrenica

At large

Marinko Katava Bosnian Croat Kupreskic and others Surrendered to the Tribunal on October 6,

1997, and released in December 1997 for

lack of evidence.

Dusan Knezevic Bosnian Serb Omarska, Keraterm At large

Dragan Kondic Bosnian Serb Keraterm The Tribunal dropped the charges against

him in May 1998, although it reserved the

right to reinstate charges at a later date.

Dario Kordic Bosnian Croat Kordic and others Surrendered to the Tribunal on October 6,

1997. Currently in custody at the Tribunal,

awaiting the start of his trial.

Milojica Kos Bosnian Serb Omarska At large

(continued)

Page 47 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix IV 

Status of Publicly Indicted Individuals as of

May 14, 1998

Name Ethnicity Indictment(s) Status as of May 14, 1998

Predrag Kostic Bosnian Serb Omarska The Tribunal dropped the charges against

him in May 1998, although it reserved the

right to reinstate charges at a later date.

Radomir Kovac Bosnian Serb Foca At large

Milan Kovacevic Bosnian Serb Drljaca and Kovacevic Detained by SFOR forces on July 10, 1997,

at which time his sealed indictment was

made public. Currently in custody at the

Tribunal, awaiting the start of his trial.

Dragan Kulundzija Bosnian Serb Keraterm At large

Dragoljub Kunarac Bosnian Serb Foca Surrendered to the Tribunal on March 4,

1998. Currently in custody at the Tribunal,

awaiting start of his trial.

Mirjan Kupreskic Bosnian Croat Kupreskic and others Surrendered to the Tribunal on October 6,

1997. Currently in custody at the Tribunal,

awaiting the start of his trial.

Vlatko Kupreskic Bosnian Croat Kupreskic and others Shot and wounded by SFOR forces while

resisting detention on December 18, 1997.

Currently in custody at the Tribunal, awaiting

the start of his trial.

Zoran Kupreskic Bosnian Croat Kupreskic and others Surrendered to the Tribunal on October 6,

1997. Currently in custody at the Tribunal,

awaiting the start of his trial.

Miroslav Kvocka Bosnian Serb Omarska Detained by SFOR forces on April 8, 1998.

Currently in custody at the Tribunal, awaiting

the start of his trial.

Goran Lajic Bosnian Serb Keraterm The Tribunal dropped the charges against

him in May 1998, although it reserved the

right to reinstate charges at a later date.

Esad Landzo Bosniak Celebici Arrested by Bosnian authorities on May 2,

1996, and delivered to the Tribunal on 

June 13, 1996. Currently in custody and on

trial at the Tribunal.

Zoran Marinic Bosnian Croat Marinic At large

Milan Martic Bosnian Serb Zagreb At large

Zeljko Meakic Bosnian Serb Omarska At large

Slobodan Milijkovic Bosnian Serb Bosanski Samac At large

Ratko Mladic Bosnian Serb Karadzic and Mladic,

Srebrenica

At large

Mile Mrksic Serb Vukovar At large

Zdravko Mucic Bosnian Croat Celebici Arrested by Austrian authorities on

March 18, 1996, and delivered to the

Tribunal on April 9, 1996. Currently in

custody and on trial at the Tribunal.

Dragan Nikolic Bosnian Serb Susica At large

(continued)

Page 48 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix IV 

Status of Publicly Indicted Individuals as of

May 14, 1998

Name Ethnicity Indictment(s) Status as of May 14, 1998

Dragan Papic Bosnian Croat Kupreskic and others Surrendered to the Tribunal on October 6,

1997. Currently in custody at the Tribunal,

awaiting the start of his trial.

Nedjeljko Paspalj Bosnian Serb Omarska The Tribunal dropped the charges against

him in May 1998, although it reserved the

right to reinstate charges at a later date.

Milan Pavlic Bosnian Serb Omarska The Tribunal dropped the charges against

him in May 1998, although it reserved the

right to reinstate charges at a later date.

Milutin Popovic Bosnian Serb Omarska The Tribunal dropped the charges against

him in May 1998, although it reserved the

right to reinstate charges at a later date.

Dragoljub Prcac Bosnian Serb Omarska At large

Drazenko Predojevic Bosnian Serb Omarska The Tribunal dropped the charges against

him in May 1998, although it reserved the

right to reinstate charges at a later date.

Miroslav Radic Serb Vukovar At large

Mladen Radic Bosnian Serb Omarska Detained by SFOR forces on April 8, 1998.

Currently in custody at the Tribunal, awaiting

the start of his trial.

Ivica Rajic Bosnian Croat Stupni Do At large

Ivan Santic Bosnian Croat Kordic and others Surrendered to the Tribunal on October 6,

1997, and released in December 1997 for

lack of evidence.

Vladimir Santic Bosnian Croat Kupreskic and others Surrendered to the Tribunal on October 6,

1997. Currently in custody at the Tribunal,

awaiting the start of his trial.

Dragomir Saponja Bosnian Serb Omarska, Keraterm The Tribunal dropped the charges against

him in May 1998, although it reserved the

right to reinstate charges at a later date.

Zeljko Savic Bosnian Serb Omarska The Tribunal dropped the charges against

him in May 1998, although it reserved the

right to reinstate charges at a later date.

Dusko Sikirica Bosnian Serb Keraterm At large

Blagoje Simic Bosnian Serb Bosanski Samac At large

Milan Simic Bosnian Serb Bosanski Samac Surrendered to the Tribunal on February 14,

1998. Granted provisional release from the

Tribunal custody for health reasons on

March 26, 1998. Currently in Bosanski

Samac, but will return to the Tribunal when

his trial begins.

Pero Skopljak Bosnian Croat Kordic and others Surrendered to the Tribunal on October 6,

1997, and released in December 1997 for

lack of evidence.

Veselin Sljivancanin Serb Vukovar At large

Radovan Stankovic Bosnian Serb Foca At large

(continued)

Page 49 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix IV 

Status of Publicly Indicted Individuals as of

May 14, 1998

Name Ethnicity Indictment(s) Status as of May 14, 1998

Dusko Tadic Bosnian Serb Tadic and other Arrested by German authorities in February

1994 and turned over to the Tribunal in April

1995. Convicted by the Tribunal of crimes

against humanity and violations of the laws

or customs of war in May 1997 and

sentenced to 20 years. Tadic remains in

custody at the Tribunal, awaiting the

outcome of pending prosecution and

defense appeals of his sentence.

Miroslav Tadic Bosnian Serb Bosanski Samac Surrendered to the Tribunal on February 14,

1998. Currently in custody at the Tribunal,

awaiting the start of his trial.

Nedjeljko Timarac Bosnian Serb Keraterm The Tribunal dropped the charges against

him in May 1998, although it reserved the

right to reinstate charges at a later date.

Stevan Todorovic Bosnian Serb Bosanski Samac At large

Zoran Vukovic Bosnian Serb Foca At large

Simo Zaric Bosnian Serb Bosanski Samac Surrendered to the Tribunal on February 24,

1998. Currently in custody at the Tribunal,

awaiting the start of his trial.

Dragan Zelenovic Bosnian Serb Foca At large

Zoran Zigic Bosnian Serb Omarska, Keraterm Surrendered to the Tribunal on April 16,

1998. Currently in custody at the Tribunal,

awaiting the start of his trial.

Legend

SFOR = Stabilization Force

UNTAES = U.N. Transitional Administration for Eastern Slavonia, Baranja, and Western Sirmium

Sources: Compiled by GAO from Tribunal annual reports, press releases, and a report by the

Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe.

Page 50 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix V 

Comments From the Department of State

Page 51 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix V 

Comments From the Department of State

Page 52 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix VI 

Comments From the Department of Defense

Page 53 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix VII 

Comments From the International Criminal

Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Note: GAO comments

supplementing those in the

report text appear at the

end of this appendix.

Page 54 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix VII 

Comments From the International Criminal

Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Now on p. 5.

See comment 1.

Now on p. 5.

See comment 1.

Now on p. 6.

See comment 1.

Now on p. 7.

See comment 1.

Page 55 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix VII 

Comments From the International Criminal

Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Now on p. 9.

See comment 1.

Now on p. 10.

See comment 1.

Now on p. 11.

See comment 2.

Now on p. 12.

See comment 1.

Now on p. 13.

See comment 1.

Now on p. 15.

See comment 1.

Now on p. 15.

See comment 1.

Now on p. 15.

See comment 3.

Page 56 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix VII 

Comments From the International Criminal

Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Now on p. 16.

See comment 1.

Now on p. 17.

See comment 4.

Now on p. 17.

See comment 1.

Now on p. 20.

See comment 1.

See comment 1.

Now on p. 20.

See comment 1.

Now on p. 21.

See comment 1.

Page 57 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix VII 

Comments From the International Criminal

Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Now on p. 21.

See comment 1.

Now on p. 22.

See comment 5.

Now on p. 22.

See comment 1.

Now on p. 23.

See comment 1.

Page 58 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix VII 

Comments From the International Criminal

Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Now on p. 24.

See comment 6.

Now on p. 31.

See comment 7.

Now on p. 40.

See comment 1.

Now on p. 42.

See comment 1.

Page 59 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix VII 

Comments From the International Criminal

Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

See comment 8.

See comment 9.

Now on p. 17.

Page 60 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix VII 

Comments From the International Criminal

Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

See comment 1.

See comment 1.

Page 61 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix VII 

Comments From the International Criminal

Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

Page 62 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix VII 

Comments From the International Criminal

Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

The following are GAO’s comments on the International Criminal Tribunal

for the former Yugoslavia’s letter dated May 5, 1998.

GAO Comments 1. We modified the text to incorporate these comments.

2. We specifically explain the limitations on the use of loaned personnel.

3. It is possible for the Tribunal to hold three trials at the same time,

although this would mean the appeals chamber could not be

simultaneously constituted. We modified the text to clarify this point. As

such, our analysis used the best-case scenario of holding three trials at a

time; an approach we believe to be conservative.

4. We calculated the figure of 800,000 pages in the document backlog from

information obtained from the Office of the Prosecutor.

5. We acknowledge the Tribunal’s comment, however, our report does not

express an opinion on the United States’ position regarding the surcharge.

6. As explained in our Objectives, Scope, and Methodology (app. I), we did

not assess the Tribunal’s administrative functions, or the efficiency and

effectiveness with which it used its resources because to have done so

would have required complete access to U.N. internal documents on these

matters. The United Nations does not make such documents available to

us.

7. We reviewed past performance reports for the Tribunal and found that

they did not provide the level of detail necessary to perform a review of

the Tribunal’s capacity.

8. As we noted in our Objectives, Scope, and Methodology, there are

uncertainties in attempting to estimate the potential future trial workload

for the Tribunal. The number of future trials is a function of when accused

are arrested or surrender, the extent to which they are tried in groups, and

the uncertainties involved in estimating how long pretrial motions, trials,

and appeals will take. To estimate workload, our analysis used the

Tribunal’s historic trends and track record on these factors.

9. We agree that in this instance the accused would not face any additional

delay. Although our analysis indicates that the Tribunal may be unable to

Page 63 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix VII 

Comments From the International Criminal

Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia

begin trials without undue delay, this does not mean that accused war

criminals should avoid surrendering.

Page 64 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix VIII 

Comments From the U.N.

Under-Secretary-General for Management

Note: GAO comments

supplementing those in the

report text appear at the

end of this appendix.

Now on p. 1.

See comment 1.

Now on pp. 21-23.

See comment 2.

See comment 3.

Page 65 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix VIII 

Comments From the U.N.

Under-Secretary-General for Management

See comment 4.

See comment 5.

Now on p. 9.

See comment 6.

Now on p. 11.

See comment 7.

Now on p. 15.

See comment 6.

Now on p. 17.

See comment 8.

Page 66 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix VIII 

Comments From the U.N.

Under-Secretary-General for Management

The following are GAO’s comments on the U.N. Under-Secretary-General

for Management’s letter dated May 7, 1998.

GAO Comments 1. The United Nations and the Tribunal did not provide us access to budget

requests and justifications from component units of the Tribunal that were

used to support the budget request; Tribunal budget requests as submitted

to U.N. headquarters; and memorandums detailing operational

implications of resource shortfalls, how assumptions behind budget

requests were developed, and rationales for estimates of future workload.

2. The issues of loaned personnel and the 13-percent surcharge are matters

of disagreement between the United States and the United Nations. We

have presented the factual basis for our comments as contained in the

available documentary evidence, including cables and memos from the

Departments of State, Defense, and Justice; General Assembly resolutions;

and reports from the Secretary General. We modified our report to better

reflect the information contained in these documents, specifically that the

mandate from the United Nations to discontinue the use of loaned staff

came from a General Assembly resolution.

3. We did not reprint this attachment to the Under-Secretary’s comments.

The attachment is available as U.N. document A/51/688.

4. The issue of what was discussed and agreed to at the meeting between

the Secretary of State and the Secretary General is a matter for the State

Department and the United Nations to resolve. Since we did not attend the

meeting, and written documentation of the meeting was not available,

information in our report is based on the recollection of State Department

officials who attended the meeting. We also discussed this matter with a

U.N. official who attended the meeting and attempted to clarify the report

to reflect the United Nations’ view.

5. Evidence we obtained, as discussed in the report, shows that potential

donors have been deterred from loaning personnel to the Tribunal because

of the surcharge. For example, officials from the Departments of Defense

and Justice specifically told us that they would only loan personnel if the

surcharge is not applied.

6. We have modified the text to incorporate this comment.

7. This indicator appears in paragraph 25 of the Tribunal’s budget request.

Page 67 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix VIII 

Comments From the U.N.

Under-Secretary-General for Management

8. Our analysis assumed that all 11 judges would remain in The Hague.

Having to relocate five judges to Rwanda to hear appeals will decrease the

number of judges available to hear trials in The Hague, and thus

potentially increase the amount of time necessary to handle the caseload.

We did not quantify this effect.

Page 68 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
Appendix IX 

Major Contributors to This Report

National Security and

International Affairs

Division, Washington,

D.C.

Harold J. Johnson

Tetsuo Miyabara

David Maurer

Zina Merritt

Rona Mendelsohn

Office of the General

Counsel, Washington,

D.C.

Mark Speight

Denver Field Office Maria Durant

Page 69 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
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Bosnia Peace Operation: Pace of Implementing the Dayton Accords

Accelerated in Mid-1997 (GAO/NSIAD-98-138, June 2, 1998).

Bosnia Peace Operation: Progress Toward the Dayton Agreement’s

Goals—An Update (GAO/T-NSIAD-97-216, July 17, 1997).

Bosnia Peace Operation: Progress Toward Achieving the Dayton

Agreement’s Goals (GAO/NSIAD-97-132, May 5, 1997).

Peace Operations: Update on the Situation in the Former Yugoslavia

(GAO/NSIAD-95-148BR, May 8, 1995).

Humanitarian Intervention: Effectiveness of U.N. Operations in Bosnia

(GAO/NSIAD-94-156BR, Apr. 13, 1994).

(711300) Page 70 GAO/NSIAD-98-134 Former Yugoslavia Tribunal
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