Milan Babić

Ivica Bilaver was a 13-year-old schoolboy in the autumn of 1991, when his home village of Skabrnja, near the Croatian city of Zadar, became the focus of fighting between Croatian forces and the Yugoslav People's Army and other Serbian fighters.

Fighting units under the ultimate command of Serbian state security officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic "controlled the situation on the ground" in Serb-controlled parts of Croatia and, to a lesser extent, Bosnia during the wars of the 1990s, veteran Serbian journalist Filip Svarm told BIRN ahead of the verdict in the pair's war crimes trial in The Hague.

Witness Dejan Lucic told the retrial of Serbian State Security Service officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Thursday that the defendants did not send Dragan Vasiljkovic, alias Captain Dragan, to Croatia in 1991 to set up a training camp for rebel Serb fighters.

A protected witness told the retrial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Wednesday that the Serbian State Security Service (SDB) was not involved in the so-called 'Log Revolution' that saw Serbs rebel against the Croatian authorities in 1990.

Defence lawyers for former Serbian security service officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic told the Hague court that notorious paramilitary leader Arkan’s fighters operated as part of the Bosnian Serb police in 1995.

Former Serbian State Security chief Jovica Stanisic’s defence told his trial in The Hague that there was no evidence that paramilitary forces who committed war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia were under the service’s control.

The defence claimed that the evidence heard during the trial of three Serb fighters had not proved they burned down a Croatian village in 1991, while the prosecution called for convictions.

A prosecution witness told the trial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic in The Hague that the Serbian State Security Service established, controlled and armed Serb forces that waged war in Croatia.

The defence lawyer for former Serbian security official Franko Simatovic claimed that the Yugoslav People’s Army led by then colonel Ratko Mladic was responsible for crimes during an attack on a Croatian village in 1991.

The defence for the former Serbian State Security official Franko Simatovic claimed that a key witness 'fabricated his testimony' concerning Simatovic's alleged role in fuelling the war in Croatia, which the witness denied.