A U.N. appeals court expanded the convictions of two allies of the late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, holding them responsible for involvement in crimes across Bosnia and in one town in Croatia.
FILE - Jovica Stanisic, facing camera, appears in court for his retrial at the United Nations Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague, on June 13, 2017. The appeals decision on Wednesday, May 31, 2023 by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in the retrial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic brings to an end the longest-running war crimes prosecution dating back to the Balkan wars of the early 1990s.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — United Nations appeals judges on Wednesday significantly expanded the convictions of two allies of late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, holding them responsible for involvement in crimes across Bosnia and in one town in Croatia as members of a joint criminal plan to drive out non-Serbs from the areas during the Balkan wars.
The appeals chamber at the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals overturned their acquittals of involvement in the criminal plan and raised the sentences of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic from 12 to 15 years. Presiding Judge Graciela Gatti Santana said the two men, both now in their 70s, “shared the intent to further the common criminal purpose to forcibly and permanently remove the majority of non-Serbs from large areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina through the commission of the crimes charged in the indictment.”
The appeals ruling brings to an end the longest-running war crimes prosecution dating back to the Balkan wars of the early 1990s.
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