Croatian Innocence Project

Članica projekta Projekt nedužnosti u Hrvatskoj, izv. prof. dr. sc. Suncana Roksandic dobitnica je međunarodne nagrade za izvrsnost u borbi protiv korupcije – Anti-Corruption Excellence Award za 2023. godinu, u kategoriji akademskog istraživanja i nastave. Riječ je o nagradi Centra za vladavinu prava i suzbijanje korupcije (Rule of Law and Anti-Corruption Center – ROLACC), koja se dodjeljuje kao znak priznanja i zahvale za doprinos globalnoj kampanji Ujedinjenih naroda protiv korupcije. Čestitke profesorici Roksandić na vrijednoj međunarodnoj nagradi. Suncana Roksandic

Professor Suncana Roksandic , member of the Innocence Project Croatia chaired a panel at the Annual Conference of the European Society of Criminology on transitional justice, attrocity crimes and protection of victims in international and national proceedings.

Croatia Innocence Project team has presented the research undertaken within the activities of Innocence Project Croatia on Clearview's AI vs. DNA Testing in Ukraine as a Starting Point in Criminal Investigations During the War, to the Annual Conference of the Eurocrim 2022
As a leading author and team leader of this research, Professor Suncana Roksandic Ph.D. , joined by professor Damir Primorac Ph.D. and mag. iur. Andrej Bozhinovski, presented the hurdles of identifying victims of war and crime using Clearview's AI vs. identification via DNA materials (blood samples, fingerprints dental records etc.), as well as the most commonly used DNA practices for identification of victims in Croatia.

Professor Suncana Roksandic shifted the focus to the challenges of obtaining pre-death samples of personal data in war and the expectations of new techniques such as facial recognition. Furthermore, she presented the Clearview AI and its matching capabilities of the social media accounts of dead Russian soldiers, as reported by Ukrainian officials. According to published information researched by professor Roksandic, it also includes more than 2bn images from VKontakte, a Russian social media service. General concerns over the use of Clearview during the war have been already expressed, e.g. facial recognition makes mistakes. It is bad enough when that leads police to make a wrongful arrest. In a war zone, there are even greater life and death consequences.

After analyzing Clearview's approach the second part of the presentation was focused on identification through DNA methods. The team presented the treatment of such material in practice (processing of crime-scene traces, identification of human remains, new methods in DNA analysis, using molecular markers, as well as the legal basis for DNA analysis in criminal proceedings, as presented in the book "DNA Analysis in Judicial Medicine and Judiciary" authored by the Croatia's leading scientist in this area, the esteemed professor Prof. Dragan Primorac, M.D., Ph.D. ( also a member of the Innocence Project Croatia's Project Board). Furthermore, the results of the project's field research, undertaken this year were presented to the expert public, indicating the most common DNA techniques for identification of perpetrators and victims used in Croatia and the renewal of the criminal proceedings.

Although much work is still ahead of us, we were happy to get the discussion going on these important issues.

Many thanks to Hrvatska zaklada za znanost (Croatian Science Foundation) for the continuous support of the Innocence Project Croatia, as well as the University of Zagreb, Faculty of Law for enabling its implementation.

Tim projekta zahvaljuje se gospođi Andrei Ledić mag.chem za nastavak suradnje s Projektom nedužnosti u Hrvatskoj i potporu Centra za forenzična ispitivanja, istraživanja i vještačenja "Ivan Vučetić" iz Zagreba.