CCPR/C/112/D/1966/2010 State party’s observations on admissibility and merits 4.1 The State party submitted observations on 25 March 2011. It refers to the legal framework that has been established for the prosecution of war crimes in the post-war period since December 1995. It states that a national strategy for war crimes was adopted in December 2008, with the objective of finalizing the prosecution of the most complex war crimes in 7 years, and of “other war crimes” within 15 years of the adoption of the strategy. The State party further refers to the adoption of the 2004 Law on Missing Persons, creating the Missing Persons Institute, and recalls that, of the nearly 32,000 persons who went missing during the war, the remains of 23,000 persons have been found and 21,000 identified. 4.2 As regards the authors, the State party submits that a regional office was established in Istočno, Sarajevo, as well as a field office and organizational units in Sarajevo. The State party considers that those initiatives provide the conditions for faster and more efficient processes to search for disappeared persons in the territory of Sarajevo. Their investigators are on site every day to collect information on potential mass graves and to establish contacts with witnesses. The State party further informs the Committee that the remains of Sejad Hero could perhaps be found in the area of Vogošća, or in part of Centar municipality, Sarajevo (Nahorevska brda). The State party specifies that since 1996, 135 victims have been found and exhumed and 120 missing persons identified, and it states that the Missing Persons Institute, with the support of the appropriate authorities, will continue to take all the necessary actions to find missing persons faster and to solve the case of Sejad Hero. Authors’ comments on the State party’s observations 5.1 The authors submitted their comments on the State party’s observations on 23 May 2011. They refer to the general comment of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances on enforced disappearance as a continuous crime (A/HRC/16/48, para. 39). They consider that the State party’s observations do not object to the admissibility of the communication and substantially acknowledge on the merits the allegations formulated therein. The authors further consider that those observations corroborate the allegation that Sejad Hero remains registered as an “unaccounted for” missing person, and state that no match has been found through the online inquiry tool set up by the International Commission on Missing Persons. The tracing process is, therefore, still open under the responsibility of the Bosnian authorities. 5.2 The authors state that, so far, none of them, and none of the eyewitnesses of the events that led to the enforced disappearance of Sejad Hero, have been contacted by personnel of the regional office of Istočno or the field office in Sarajevo referred to by the State party, while they consider that they would be able to provide those authorities with information that could be relevant to locating him.13 Instead, the authors contend that they were never informed that the remains of Sejad Hero could be located in Centar municipality (Nahorevska brda) before the observations of the State party were submitted to the Human Rights Committee. The authors rather consider that the remains of Sejad Hero are probably located in the area of Tihovići. They argue that they should be associated with the processes of exhumation and identification that is under way. On 25 April 2011, Tija Hero sent a letter to the Missing Persons Institute, referring to the information contained in the observations of the State party. She never received any reply to that letter. 13 The authors refer to A/HRC/AC/6/2, paras. 53, 56 and 80–97; and to the general comment of the Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances on the right to the truth in relation to enforced disappearance, para. 4. 9