THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) – 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.
Munira Subasic, the head of the organization “Mothers of Srebrenica” which gathers widows of the victims of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, welcomed the decision.
“No crime in Bosnia could have been committed without their help,” she said. “Everybody makes mistakes and mistakes can be corrected. The most important thing is that they will be tried again.”
Stanisic was head of Serbia’s state security service until Milosevic fired him in 1998. Simatovic was his deputy. Prosecutors said they were part of a criminal organization, also including Milosevic, which aimed to drive non-Serbs out of parts of Bosnia and Croatia.