Established Amendments to the Criminal Code of BiH and Criminal Procedure Code of BiH



07.09.2009. - Council of Ministers of BiH has established the Proposal of the Law on Amendments to the Criminal Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina and Proposal of the Law on Amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code of Bosnia and Herzegovina. With the adoption of the Proposal of the Law on Amendments to the Criminal Code of BiH one of the conditions for the liberalization of the visa regime will be fulfilled, i.e. legislation in that area will be harmonized with the solutions in EU countries.     

Since 2003, Team for monitoring and evaluating the application of criminal laws, as the competent body of the Ministry of Justice of Bosnia and Herzegovina, has collected data from the practice, monitored and analyzed the application of CC BiH, and proposed solutions which remove recognized legal deficiencies and introduce norms harmonized with the legal standards of the most important international legal acts. 

Comprehensive amendments to the CC BiH will, inter alia, in a systematic way, define the possibility of forfeiture of a property gain obtained by the criminal act as well as supplemented provisions related to funding and encouraging terrorist activities, recruitment for them, organizing of a terrorist groups and human trafficking.    

Amendments to the Criminal Procedure Code regulate the issue of war crimes cases allocation among the courts in BiH. Namely, the National War Crimes Prosecution Strategy provides for the establishment of functional mechanism for war crimes cases management, i.e. their assignment between the state judiciary and judiciary of Entities and Brcko District. Central register of all war crimes cases in BiH is planned to be established at the level of the Court and the Prosecutor's Office of BiH. The most responsible perpetrators of war crimes are priority, and they will be prosecuted before the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina in accordance with the agreed case selection criteria.

Amendments to the CPC also provide for, inter alia, keeping persons sentenced to five year's imprisonment or more in mandatory detention. It is about reincorporating into the law previously prescribed solution, by which is intended to enable a more efficient court procedure and prevent persons convicted of serious crimes to commit new crimes or leave BiH during the period of waiting to serve their sentence.

Proposed amendments to the laws will be referred to the Parliamentary Assembly of BiH for consideration in the basic legislative procedure.