UN Tribunal Increases Serbian State Security Officials’ Sentences

The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Wednesday increased the sentences handed down to the former chief of Serbian State Security, Jovica Stanisic, and his deputy Franko Simatovic, to 15 years in prison each, rejecting their appeals against their convictions.

The verdict, the last to be handed down by the UN court in Yugoslav war crimes cases, said the two men were guilty of participation in a joint criminal enterprise to forcibly and permanently remove non-Serbs from areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, and of bearing responsibility for murders, deportation, inhumane acts and persecution.

The court said in a statement that the judges "found Stanisic and Simatovic responsible as participants in a joint criminal enterprise for the crimes committed by various Serbian forces in 1992 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Bijeljina, Zvornik, Bosanski Samac, Derventa, and Sanski Most, and for crimes committed in 1995 in Trnovo and Sanski Most".

"They were also convicted for a killing committed in Dalj Mountain in Croatia in June 1992," the statement said.

In the initial verdict in the two men's retrial in 2021, the trial chamber acquitted them of involvement in a joint criminal enterprise led by the then president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic. Both men were key figures in the Milosevic regime's security apparatus.

The initial verdict only convicted them of aiding and abetting the State Security Service's Special Operations Unit, an armed police force known as the Red Berets, that committed crimes in the Bosanski Samac area of Bosnia and sentenced them to 12 years in jail.

But the appeal judges decided that the trial chamber "erred" in assessing the defendants' roles and said that the two...