Tribunals. War crime trials in Socialist Yugoslavia

• Applicant: Privatdozentin Dr. Sabina Ferhadbegovic
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2016 to 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 319406156

The project focuses on the Yugoslav prosecution of the war crimes in aftermath of the Second World War. The primary aim is to break with the prevailing tradition of looking at Yugoslav war crimes trials solely from the perspective of retribution. Their purpose was not only to "punish and eliminate" the former or potential combatants but also to overcome the implications of the civil war and integrate the Yugoslav society. Military trials were also an experimental ground for the development and the implementation of the concept of the revolutionary justice and socialist law. How did they influence the state-building process of Second Yugoslavia?Before the World War II Yugoslav legal scholars participated in discussions about international criminal law. During the war the Government in Exile participated on different initiatives and signed different declarations regarding war crimes. Which impact did yugoslav jurists have on the development of the concepts "crimes agains humanity" and "crimes against peace"? Meanwhile in the occupied Yugoslavia the Partisans created a fait accompli. They didn`t wait the war to end to prosecute war criminals. But what rules and ideas guided Yugoslavian Communists to their law concepts and what traditions, ideological agenda and international developments influenced their jurisdiction of war crimes? Soviet Union was their role model. The adaption of soviet criminal law took place already during the war. But with their engagement on the United Nations War Crimes Commission the Yugoslav Communists adapted its legal framework and a whole set of jurisdictional guidelines and standards and incorporated them into the Yugoslav criminal law. From this perspective, this project will analyze Yugoslav war crimes trials focusing on the transition of knowledge and transnational dynamics: Which institutions were involved in the “legal flows”? Who were the convicted perpetrators in the first trials? Who were the witnesses and what kind of evidence was produced? Did judgments follow patterns set by the IMT? And how did the first war crimes trials shape Yugoslav understanding of the WWII and the Shoah?

• DFG Programme: Research Grants