Forming of the Operational Team of the Republic of Srpska for Tracing Missing Persons

Because of the dissatisfaction of family's of missing persons from the Republic of Srpska about the work of INO, for the first six months of 2008, and the justification of INO for the lack of results finding missing Serbs, because INO doesn't have reliable information about the location of individual and mass graves, The government of RS on June 6, 2008. on the request of family's made a decision to form the Operational Team of the Republic of Srpska for Tracing Missing Persons.
Therefore the Operational Team was formed to speed up the process of finding missing persons, or, to work on collecting information about the location of graves and gives the same in information to the prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina and to the Institute.

Respecting the law about missing persons the government of RS defined the jobs and tasks of the Operational Team, and its jurisdiction that is harmonized with the law for missing persons, that do not supersede the work of the Institute, but help it operate.

After the agreement with the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Operational team must submit all information about the location of graves to the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Professional worker and investigators of the Operational Team go to the location where a grave was found and make a documentation related to the finding of mortal remains. During that the Operational Team makes a detailed photo documentation of the location and makes a drawing of the location which together with the coordinates is submitted to the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, so they could organize an exhumation. Exhumation and identification of mortal remains is not in the jurisdiction of the Operational Team, but team officials are included on the demand of the Prosecution.

Jobs and tasks of the Operational Team are:

1. Recording of missing persons and keeping a data base about missing persons and updating the list.
2. Locating the spot where a missing person was killed on the territory of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the warning of family members about the location.
3. Finding mass and individual graves in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Republic of Croatia, Republic of Serbia and the surrender of those locations to the Institute for missing persons of Bosnia and Herzegovina, in accordance with the protocol which will be signed between the Operational Team of the Republic of Srpska for Tracing Missing Persons and the Institute for missing persons of Bosnia and Herzegovina.
4. Recording and documentation of displaced mass and individual graves.
5. Recording of family members of missing persons with accurate addresses.
Record keeping about family members that didn’t give blood for
6. DNA analysis.
7. Participation of Operational Team representatives on exhumations of graves in which are the bodies of missing persons from the Operational Team’s database.
8. Establishment of cooperation with all institutions which could give information about the missing person.
9. Recording and locating of graves and missing persons which are not in the mandate of the Operational Team and the surrendering of information to competent institutions which deal with the same.
10. Cooperation with all families of missing persons from the former Yugoslavia.
11. Organizing of fair wells and the handover to the families of identified bodies from „Spomen kosturnica“ in Banjaluka, Istočno Sarajevo (East Sarajevo) and Nevesinje.
12. Record keeping about identified and unidentified bodies from „Spomen kosturnica“ in Banjaluka, Istočno Sarajevo (East Sarajevo) and Nevesinje.
13. Resolving disputes about cases from the database of missing persons of the Operational Team.
14. Production of a photo documentation of the location where the grave was found from a professional worker from the Operational team and participation in the forensic processing of the mortal remains in agreement with the prosecution authority.
15. Finding witnesses and working with witnesses which know the locations of the graves of missing persons.
16. Establishing a methodology of the workings of the Operational team.
17. Informing of the families, associations of missing persons, Government of the Republic of Srpska and the public about the results of the Operational team.
18. Establishing and maintaining of the electronic archive of the Operational team.

Funds for the Operational team are provided from the budget of the Government of the Republic of Srpska, and for their work the Operational team is responsible to the Government of the Republic of Srpska.
Operational team was not formed to locate only missing Serbs, but missing Muslims and Croats. The Operational team is made up of highly professional people. All obtained information will be professionally processed and submitted to the Prosecutor’s office of Bosnia and Herzegovina.