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Ailing Serbian Security Chief Stanisic’s Release Extended

The UN court in The Hague has extended former Serbian State Security Service chief Jovica Stanisic’s temporary release for treatment in Belgrade until August 30 because of his continuing illness.

This post is also available in this language: Shqip Macedonian Bos/Hrv/Srp

Jovica Stanisic in court. Photo: MICT.

The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague said on Thursday that it has prolonged Jovica Stanisic’s provisional release for medical treatment until August 30.

Stanisic is being retried for war crimes against non-Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1991 to 1995, along with his former assistant at the Serbian State Security Service, Franko Simatovic, alias Frenki.

Stanisic has been on provisional release in Belgrade since July 2017 due to his illness.

According to previous findings by doctors in The Hague and Belgrade, he is suffering from a chronic intestinal disease and depression.

The trial chamber ordered doctors at the Military Medical Academy in Belgrade, where Stanisic is being treated, to continue informing the court regularly about the defendant’s condition.

The trial is continuing without Stanisic’s presence in court.

Since their arrival at the Hague Detention Unit in 2003, Stanisic and Simatovic have been granted provisional release by the UN court several times.

Stanisic’s defence says that he has spent more than six years on provisional release and more than five years in detention.

The indictment alleges that Stanisic and Simatovic are responsible for persecution, murders, deportations and the forcible transfer of Croat and Bosniaks civilians during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia.

They are charged with crimes against humanity in four counts and violation of laws and customs of war in the fifth.

The prosecutors allege that the crimes were committed during the execution of a joint criminal enterprise aimed at permanently and forcibly removing Croats and Bosniaks from large parts of Croatia and Bosnia for the sake of achieving Serb domination.

According to the prosecutors, the joint criminal enterprise was led by Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

Stanisic and Simatovic both pleaded not guilty in December 2015 after the appeals chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia overturned their acquittal in their first trial.

The appeals chamber ruled that there were serious legal and factual errors when Stanisic and Simatovic were initially acquitted of war crimes in 2013, and ordered the case to be retried and all the evidence and witnesses reheard in full by new judges.

This post is also available in this language: Shqip Macedonian Bos/Hrv/Srp


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