Serbian State Security Service

Osijek County Court. Photo: Vuk Tesija.

The court found that Vasiljevic committed the crimes as the head of the Security Directorate of the then Yugoslavian Federal Secretariat for National Defence, SSNO, during the war in Croatia.

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.

Seven days before his 22nd birthday, Haris Talic was among more than 60 Bosniaks and Croats captured in the Sanski Most area of Bosnia and Herzegovina in September 1995 and then killed.

Judge Carmel Agius, president of the UN's International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals, told the court in The Hague on Thursday that the appeal verdict in the trial of former Serbian State Security Service officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic will be delivered "about this time next year".

Belgrade Higher Court told BIRN that Zvezdan Jovanovic, who shot dead Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic in 2003, is not eligible to ask for conditional release from prison until the end of 2029, despite a campaign calling for him to be freed immediately as a 'Serbian hero'.

Lawyers for former Serbian State Security Service officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic appealed on Monday against the verdict in June which sentenced them both to 12 years in prison for aiding and abetting crimes war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992.

A senior official from the Serbian State Security Service, Franko 'Frenki' Simatovic, arrived at a covert paramilitary training camp near the town of Ilok in Croatia in the spring of 1992 - one of many that would allegedly be set up by Serbian security officials during the wars that erupted as Yugoslavia collapsed.

The defence teams of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic urged the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Tuesday to acquit both men of committing crimes during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia from 1991 to 1995.

The president of the UN's International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, Carmel Agius, told the UN Security Council on Monday evening that the final verdict in the case against wartime Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic is due in May next year.

The Association of Defence Counsel Practising Before the International Courts and Tribunals urged the UN's Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Friday to free elderly war crime convicts to help ensure that they are not infected with the COVID-19 virus.