Former Serbian officials convicted of war crimes

A war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, convicted two former Serbian officials Wednesday of aiding and abetting war crimes committed in the 1990s wars that ravaged the Balkans, the first time that prosecutors tied highranking officials from the wartime government in Belgrade to involvement in conflicts in neighboring countries.

It was the final case to be heard by the international criminal tribunal established by the United Nations to prosecute war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide in those wars. The verdict capped dozens of trials that followed the bloody breakup of Yugoslavia.

The case, coming nearly three decades after the tribunal was established, was also a coda for the protracted legal struggle to hold to account the architects and perpetrators of the worst bloodletting in Europe since the end of World War II. It was the last chance for prosecutors to tie officials from the Serbian state to atrocities in neighboring Bosnia and Croatia.

Few Serbian officials played as critical a role during the conflicts as defendants Jovica Stanisic, the former head of Serbia’s state security, and Franko Simatovic, his deputy.

The presiding judge, Burton Hall, announced the findings Wednesday, saying the court found that the defendants were guilty of running a “joint criminal enterprise” to remove nonSerbs from areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. In so doing, they created “an atmosphere of terror, arbitrary detentions and forced labor.”

However, the findings were limited in scope, focusing on one Bosnian municipality, and rejected a vast majority of the prosecution’s charges, handing down sentences that fell far short of what prosecutors wanted. Stanisic and Simatovic were both sentenced to 12 years in prison, including time served.

Prosecutors said Stanisic was the second most powerful man in Serbia from 1992 to 1995, when Slobodan Milosevic was president.

Simatovic, the head of special operations, could be heard bragging about attacks on villages, according to evidence presented during the trials.

More than 100,000 people died during the conflagrations from 1991 to 1995, and about 2 million people were displaced.