Serbian Interior Ministry

The UN's Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague has rejected an application for early release from prison from former Serbian Interior Ministry official Vlastimir Djordjevic, citing serious concerns about his level of rehabilitation.

Serbian police on Tuesday arrested civic activist Vanja Calovic and illustrator Jelena Jacimovic for throwing eggs at a mural of Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic on the wall of a residential building in Belgrade.

The Youth Initiative for Human Rights, a Belgrade-based NGO, filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Serbian Interior Ministry after it banned rights activists from organising a public gathering to paint over a mural of Bosnian Serb wartime general Ratko Mladic on the wall of a residential building in the capital.

Pristina Basic Court found Goran Stanisic guilty on Tuesday of war crimes against ethnic Albanian civilians in the town of Lipjan/Lipljan during the Kosovo war in 1999 and sentenced him to 20 years in prison.

On Wednesday however, the Serbian Interior Ministry denied that Savcic had entered the country. The Border Police of Bosnia and Herzegovina also said he had not been registered as leaving.

By disappearing, Savcic became one of dozens of war crime defendants or convicts who are unavailable to the Bosnian judicial authorities. Most of them are in Serbia.

The media reported that Stanisic and Simatovic were sentenced to 12 years in prison each.
The prosecution proved that the crimes in the indictment were confirmed. The killings and forcible transfers were carried out with discriminatory intent.
The prosecution alleges that the accused participated in the organization of the crimes that took place.

The Serbian authorities granted citizenship to former Bosnian Serb military policeman Mirko Vrucinic in June 2020 - two months before his defence was due to present its closing arguments in his war crimes trial, BIRN has learned.

While Serbian officials continue to downplay the role of the Interior Minister's father in the arms trade, documents obtained by BIRN reveal his high-level activities in this field.

They show that Branko Stefanovic, father of Interior Minister Nebojsa Stefanovic, traveled in May to the "Bereta" arms factory in Italy as part of a Serbian Interior Ministry delegation, for example.

Behgjet Pacolli said on Tuesday that he has given the Kosovo prosecution "thousands of materials that prove the Serbian genocidal policy against Kosovo" and offer evidence of mass killings by the Yugoslav Army, the Serbian Interior Ministry, Belgrade-controlled paramilitaries and local armed groups during the Kosovo war.

The prosecution in the retrial of former Serbian State Security officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague argued on Tuesday that defence witness Dragoslav Krsmanovic gave different evidence to the court than when he first testified at the original trial in 2011, putting his credibility in question.