Miodrag Stojanovic

Data from the SKY ECC communications app, seized in a French and Dutch-led police operation, cannot be legally used in criminal proceedings, lawyers from Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro concluded in a debate in Belgrade.

"The Supreme Court of Republika Srpska has issued a verdict in the case of Milenko Gojgolovic, confirming the decision of the District Court in East Sarajevo," the court told BIRN.

The District Public Prosecution in East Sarajevo has filed an appeal against the verdict clearing Milenko Gojgolovic of beating and raping a female detainee at the Susica detention camp in Vlasenica in June 1992.

Gojgolovic was a member of the Territorial Defence force in Vlasenica, which was then renamed the Vlasenica Light Infantry Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army's Drina Corps.

Ex-soldier Milenko Gojgolovic's lawyer Miodrag Stojanovic told BIRN on Wednesday that the District Court in East Sarajevo acquitted his client "due to a lack of evidence".

Gojgolovic was a member of the Territorial Defence force in Vlasenica and later became a member of the Vlasenica Light Infantry Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army's Drina Corps.

Miodrag Stojanovic, a member of Ratko Mladic's legal team, told BIRN on Tuesday that the Bosnian Serb Army commander's health condition was deteriorating in custody at the UN detention unit near The Hague, where he is waiting to be transferred to prison in another country to serve his life sentence for wartime crimes.

According to the plan, work on hundreds of unsolved cases should be completed by 2023.

However, the deadline set in the previous national strategy, which envisaged that the most complex war crimes cases would be solved by 2015, was not met, and some legal experts doubt that the new strategy will succeed either.

Ratko Mladic's defence team told BIRN on Wednesday that the former Bosnian Serb Army commander, who is appealing against his conviction for genocide and other wartime crimes, should be hospitalised immediately in The Hague because his health condition is now "disastrous".

Miodrag Stojanovic, one of the lawyers representing Ratko Mladic at his trial in The Hague, told BIRN that the former Bosnian Serb military commander had a colon operation on Monday and has now left hospital.

"He was discharged from the hospital yesterday [Wednesday] and returned to the [UN] detention unit [in the Netherlands]," said Stojanovic.

Zoran Pantic, who participated in killing six members of a family in 1993 and then escaped from prison and went to live in Switzerland under a false name, was extradited to Bosnia and Herzegovina and has been back behind bars in Bijeljina since Monday evening, local media reported on Tuesday.

After his arrest, Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic told his lawyers not to waste time defending him, but instead to defend the “Serb army and people”, defence team member Miodrag Stojanovic told BIRN.