Imaginary trials

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From the moment a recording of the shooting of six Muslim captives in Trnovo in July 1995 was played in court during the trial of Slobodan Miloševic on June 1, 2005, the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) received a flood of calls. It appeared that Serbia was finally confronting its past, with perpetrators arrested, politicians condemning the crime, and the president meeting with representatives of the ‘Mothers of Srebrenica.’ For a brief moment, it seemed the Serbian population collectively denounced the atrocities. However, nearly ten years later, as the Hague tribunal concluded its last trials and many accused were released after serving two-thirds of their sentences, national rallies supporting these individuals became commonplace. Public celebrations of war criminals persist across the former Yugoslavia. Despite the trials, EU conditioning policies, and significant financial backing from human rights organizations, there has been limited progress in transitional justice two decades after the war. This book examines a specific aspect of post-conflict transitions in the former Yugoslavia: the role of legal narratives in shaping public discourse about ‘the past’ and how they contribute to the formulation of collective memory.