CCPR/C/115/D/2048/2011 Constitutional Court’s decision of 13 May 2008 (see para. 2.14 above). In reply to the Operative Team’s request, on 13 April 2011, Dino Kadirić had sent a copy of this decision. As at the time of submitting their comments, the authors had not received any further communication from the Operative Team. 5.10 The authors’ requests for compensation under the Law on Compensation (see para 2.14 above) had been rejected by the State Attorney’s Office of the Republika Srpska on 3 June 2011. It had stated that it was not competent because Ermin Kadirić was a civilian and had not disappeared in connection with the conduct of military services and military defence activities. The authors claimed that it amounted to discrimination between civilian victims of the war and veterans and therefore to a violation of article 26, read in conjunction with article 2 (3). The authors informed the Committee that, on 20 June 2011, they had appealed the State Attorney’s decision to the Ministry of Justice of the Republika Srpska. At the time of the submission of their comments to the Committee, the appeal was still pending. State party’s further observations 6.1 On 12 September, 3 October and 2 November 2011, the State party submitted additional information and reiterated its observations. 6.2 The State party forwarded to the Committee a letter from Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina dated 21 September 2011, in which the Office reiterated that domestic remedies had not been exhausted in the authors’ case. The State party also indicated that it continued investigations concerning the crimes committed in the municipality of Prijedor (see para. 4.3 above) and maintained that, on the basis of their complexity, those cases had been included in the category of cases that could last up to seven years before being solved. The Prosecutor’s Office noted that, owing to the large number of victims, it considered that it was not practical or rational for it to communicate with each person affected or concerned in order to inform him or her of the status of the investigation. Instead, the Office had adopted a practice of replying to queries submitted by victims’ associations. Thus, the authors could request the information concerning their relative through any of those organizations. It further maintained that the transmission of the State party’s observations to the authors in the context of the present communication should be considered a means for them to be individually informed about the progress in their relative’s case. The Prosecutor also pointed out that the families of missing persons would be called to testify in the course of the investigation, but that the number of pieces of evidence and witnesses must be necessarily limited to ensure the efficiency and costeffectiveness of criminal proceedings. 6.3 MPI maintained that Ermin Kadirić’s fate and whereabouts had not been established with certainty, but it did not exclude the possibility that his mortal remains might be found in the territory of the municipalities where it carried out investigations, such as the municipality of Prijedor. It also informed the Committee of its efforts to trace missing persons in Bosnian Krajina and about the fact that two investigators of the regional office of Bihać and the field office of Sanski Most were in charge of tracing missing persons in that territory. 6.4 As to the authors’ request for compensation under the Law on Compensation, the State party highlighted that the State Attorney’s Office of the Republika Srpska was not a judicial authority and could not adjudicate civil or damage claims, as only courts had jurisdiction over those matters. In its decision of 3 June 2011, the State Attorney’s Office stated simply that it had no competence to conduct the administrative proceedings to conclude an amicable settlement under that Law. However, that decision did not affect the authors’ right to file a civil lawsuit. The State party therefore considered that the authors 12