Iskaza

Iskaza is a term used in several South Slavic languages, notably Serbian, Croatian, and Bosnian, to denote a formal statement or testimony given to authorities. In legal contexts, an iskaza is the sworn account of a witness or the defendant and is typically collected as part of police investigations or court proceedings. The term appears in court records, archival documents, and historical texts dealing with crime, trial procedures, and judicial processes.

In everyday usage, more common words such as izjava (declaration) or svedočenje (testimony) may be used, but iskaza carries a specifically formal, sworn connotation. Across different periods, iskaza has played a role in the evidence-gathering procedures of civil and criminal law, and it is often cited in discussions of legal rights, oath-taking, and the rights of the accused.

The concept is primarily linguistic and legal rather than cultural; outside formal contexts, the word can appear in literature or journalism to refer to a person’s account of events, sometimes as a witness’s sworn statement in a narrative. Iskaza has parallels in other languages’ terms for testimony or deposition, such as the English "testimony" or "deposition."