Christian Schmidt, the international peace envoy in Bosnia and Herzegovina, said the enforcement of law and justice will continue even with closure of the ICTY, the UN court for war crimes in former Yugoslavia.

“Although one could well have imagined a continuation of the ICTY's work, it is evident BiH authorities are fulfilling their task of enforcing justice for everyone,” said Schmidt, in response to the latest operation of Bosnia's state police, which arrested six war crime suspects in the northern town of Prijedor.

The suspects, former members of the Bosnian Serb forces, are charged among other things with carrying out the persecution based on ethnic, political and religious affiliation, committing murders, tortures, forceful displacement and deportation. They are also suspected of being part of a system that organised war camps in the Prijedor, which kept captured men, women and children of the Bosniak and Croat ethnicities.

Bosnian state police arrest six war crime suspects

Schmidt welcomed the move of the Bosnian law enforcement agencies towards the criminal proceeding of the suspects.

“This bodes well for both the consistent implementation of the Dayton Peace Agreement and for the country's road towards the European Union,” he added.

Schmidt took office in August last year, after being appointed the international community's High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in charge of overseeing the implementation of the peace process in the country.