UN orders retrial of two aids of ex-Siberia President Slobodan Milosevic
Stanisic was head of Serbia’s state security service until Milosevic fired him in 1998.
The Hague, Netherlands: United Nations judges on Tuesday ordered a retrial for two former allies of the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic who were acquitted in 2013 of setting up and arming notorious Serb paramilitary gangs that committed atrocities in Bosnia and Croatia during the 1990s Balkan wars.
Presiding Judge Fausto Pocar of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia overturned the acquittals of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic and ordered both men detained pending their new trial.
Stanisic was head of Serbia’s state security service until Milosevic fired him in 1998. Simatovic was his former deputy. Prosecutors said they were part of a criminal organisation that also included Milosevic, whose aim was to drive non-Serbs out of parts of Bosnia and Croatia.
Milosevic himself died in his UN cell in 2006 before judges in his long-running trial could reach verdicts on charges that he fomented violence throughout the Balkans in the 1990s.
Neither man showed any emotion as Pocar ordered a new trial for only the second time in the history of the tribunal.
Pocar’s order comes as the UN-funded court is under pressure to complete its remaining cases and close down.
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