UN Court Hears Appeals in Serbian Officials’ War Crimes Trial

Franko Simatovic (right) and Jovica Stanisic in court in June 2017. Photo: EPA/Michael Kooren/Reuters pool.

The prosecution will then present its own appeal against the verdict on Wednesday, urging the UN court to convict the defendants of other wartime crimes of which they were initially acquitted and impose longer sentences.

In June 2021, after a retrial, the court sentenced Stanisic and Simatovic to 12 years in prison each for their role in crimes committed by a Serbian State Security Service special unit in Bosanski Samac in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992.

The two men, both powerful and widely-feared figures in Slobodan Milosevic's regime in Serbia in the 1990s, were found to have assisted fighters from the Serbian State Security's Special Operations Unit, an armed police force known as the Red Berets, who committed the crimes.

"The trial chamber finds proven beyond reasonable doubt that Stanisic and Simatovic are responsible for aiding and abetting the crimes of persecution, murder, deportation, and forcible transfer committed by Serb forces in Bosanski Samac," said the verdict.

It explained that "through organising training and deploying members of the unit and local Serbs from Bosanski Samac during the takeover of the municipality, the defendants provided practical assistance, which had a substantial effect on the perpetration of the crimes in Bosanski Samac".

But the two men were acquitted of "planning, ordering, or aiding and abetting" other crimes committed by Serb fighting units elsewhere in Bosnia and in Croatia during the war there.

In their appeals, Stanisic and Simatovic have asked the court to quash the verdict and deliver an acquittal or reduce their sentences.

Stanisic's defence argues that because...