Serbian State Security Officials’ Verdict Due by June 30

The president of International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, Carmel Agius, told the UN Security Council on Tuesday evening that the verdict in the retrial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic is still on track to be delivered this month.

"I am pleased to inform you that the judgement in Stanisic and Simatovic retrial is expected to be delivered by the 30th June of this year. The proceedings have progressed extremely efficiently during the reporting period, with closing arguments held in April despite various challenges," Agius said as he presented the court's regular progress report to a Security Council meeting on Tuesday evening.

Stanisic, the former head of Serbian State Security, and Simatovic, his former deputy, are being retried for alleged participation in a joint criminal enterprise whose aim was the forcible and permanent removal of the majority of non-Serbs, mainly Croats and Bosniaks, from large areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in the period from 1991 to 1995.

Agius said that the final verdict in the case against former Bosnina Serb military chief Ratko Mladic on Tuesday represented "another tremendous step toward the finalisation of [the court's] core judicial work".

Mladic was sentenced to life imprisonment for the Srebrenica genocide and crimes committed during Bosnian war.

Chief Hague prosecutor Serge Brammertz said that Mladic's final verdict "reminds us of the other important work still ahead".

"Many of Mladic's accomplices and subordinates still need to be held accountable for their crimes as must many of the war crimes perpetrators in all the countries of the former Yugoslavia," Brammertz told the Security Council.

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