Mihailovic ruling welcomed, and condemned

Mihailovic ruling welcomed, and condemned

BELGRADE -- Thursday's decision by the Higher Court in Belgrade to rehabilitate Dragoljub Draza Mihailovic has been hailed by some and condemned by others.

Mihailovic was the leader of the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, known also as the Chetniks, a royalist formation that fought a civil war against the communist Partisans during the Second World War and the Nazi occupation.

Yugoslavia's post-war communist authorities in 1946 charged Mihailovic with collaboration with the Nazi occupiers and sentenced him to death in a trial described as political and ideological.

He was also stripped of his rights as a citizen - something that the court ruling announced on Thursday restored.

Explaining the decision, Judge Aleksandar Tresnjev said that the court did not seek to determine whether or not Mihailovic was a war criminal, but only if he had been given a fair and just trial in 1946.

"This is not a rehabilitation of the Ravna Gora (Ravnogorski) Movement and the Yugoslav Army in the Homeland, because that has been done via numerous laws related to veteran issues - this was exclusively about whether Dagoljub Mihailovic had a fair and just trial," the judge stressed.

The court found that this was not the case, Tresnjev continued. Mihailovic did not have a right to present his defense, and he did not see his lawyer before the trial started.

"Dragoljub Mihailovic is considered a person who has not been convicted," the judge announced, to a thunderous applause of the members of the public present in the courtroom.

"Disgraceful"

Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic reacted to the news to say he was "personally dissatisfied" with the decision, considering...