The Hague: Verdict for Milošević's key players Stanišić and Simatović to be pronounced tomorrow

The Hague Tribunal will pronounce on Tuesday, 15 December, the final verdict for former DB chief Jovica Stanišić and his assistant Franko Simatović, known as Frenki, charged with crimes against Bosniaks and Croats in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1991-95, reports the Patria news agency.

In the first-instance verdict pronounced on 29 May 2013, the Tribunal acquitted Stanišić and Simatović on all counts of the indictment. 

Stanišić and Simatović, who were on provisional release in Serbia, returned to the court's custody in November, so that a month later they could attend the pronouncement of the final verdict. 

The prosecution of the Hague Tribunal filed an appeal against the first-instance acquittal on 28 June 2013, requesting that the Appeals Chamber fully overturn it and find Stanišić and Simatović guilty on all counts of the indictment. 

The prosecutors reiterated this request during the hearing on their appeal in July this year. 

The defence lawyers for Stanišić and Simatović then asked the Appeals Chamber to reject the appeal and uphold the acquittal. 

In the first-instance verdict, reached by a majority vote of the judges, the Tribunal found that Stanišić and Simatović were not guilty of persecution on racial, religious and political grounds, murder, deportation and forcible transfer of Croatian and Bosniak civilians. 

As unproven, the majority of judges also rejected the indictment's allegation that Simatović and Stanišić were participants in a joint criminal enterprise, whose aim was the permanent and violent removal of non-Serbs from large parts of the territories of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which would then be incorporated into a unified Serbian state. 

According to the indictment, the head of this criminal enterprise was the then President of Serbia, Slobodan Milošević. 

The first-instance acquittal established that Stanišić and Simatović equipped, trained, financed, controlled and sent the "Red Berets" to the battlefields in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina - which later evolved into the SDB Special Operations Unit. 

That unit, together with the Serbian Volunteer Guard of Željko Ražnatović Arkan, the militia of SAO Krajina and other forces, "committed crimes of deportation and forcible transfer at numerous locations in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina", the verdict found. 

The Trial Chamber also established that these formations and the "škorpioni" "committed a large number of murders of Croats, Bosniaks and other non-Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina". 

According to the verdict, the "Red Berets" committed murders and deportations in Bosanski Šamac, and forcible transfer of non-Serbs in Doboj in the spring of 1992, but Stanišić and Simatović did not "control" the unit in those operations, although they "organised" its participation. The judges dismissed the charges for crimes in eastern Slavonia, Zvornik, Bijeljina and Sanski Most as unproven. 

The first-instance chamber concluded, by a majority vote, that there was a "reasonable possibility" that, by sending the "Red Berets" outside Serbia, Stanišić and Simatović had a "limited intention... of establishing and maintaining Serbian control over large parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina". 

The verdict established that it was not proven that Stanišić and Simatović "controlled" Ražnatović's SDG, nor the "škorpioni" and other paramilitaries that committed crimes, but that they had "less significant connections" with them. 

Stanišić and Simatović were also acquitted of the shooting of six young Bosniak men from Srebrenica, committed on 16 July 1995 by members of the "škorpioni", who filmed the murder. 
 

The indictment that Stanišić and Simatović were a "communication channel" between Milošević and other participants in the joint criminal enterprise - Radovan Karadžić, Ratko Mladić, Milan Martić, Goran Hadžić, Milan Babić - was dismissed by the Trial Chamber as unproven, although they had direct and numerous contacts. 

Stanišić and Simatović were arrested by the Serbian authorities during Operation "Sablja" after the murder of Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić, on 12 March 2003. Stanišić was transferred to The Hague on 11 June, and Simatović on 30 May of that year. 

At their first appearance before the judge, both pleaded not guilty. 

The trial began, after one unsuccessful attempt, in June 2009, and the presentation of evidence was completed on 17 September 2011. The prosecutors presented 62 witnesses before the judges, and 33 witnesses gave testimony in defence of the accused.