Stanišić and Simatović Responsible for the Murder of Srebrenica Residents in Trnovo in 1995

(Patria) - The Appeals Chamber of the Mechanism, composed of Judges Graciela Gatti Santana (Presiding), Lee G. Muthoga, Aminatta Runeni N’gum, Yusuf Aksar, and Claudia Hoefer, today announced its judgment on the appeals filed by Jovica Stanišić and Frank Simatović, and by the Mechanism’s Prosecution, against the judgment rendered by the Trial Chamber of the Mechanism on June 30, 2021, and issued in writing on August 6, 2021, in the case of The Prosecutor versus Jovica Stanišić and Frank Simatović.

The Appeals Chamber dismissed the appeals of Stanišić and Simatović against their convictions for aiding and abetting murder as a violation of the laws and customs of war, as well as for murder, deportation, inhumane acts (forcible transfer), and persecution as crimes against humanity, following the capture of Bosanski Šamac in Bosnia and Herzegovina in April 1992. The criminal responsibility of Stanišić and Simatović was based on findings that they organized training and then engaged Serbian forces who participated in the capture and the crimes. The Appeals Chamber also dismissed the appeals of Stanišić and Simatović against the sentences of 12 years imprisonment each.

The Appeals Chamber partially granted the Prosecution’s appeal by finding that the Trial Chamber erred in not convicting Stanišić and Simatović under the mode of responsibility for joint criminal enterprise. The Trial Chamber had concluded that a joint criminal enterprise existed and that its common criminal purpose was the forcible and permanent removal of the majority of non-Serbs from large parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina through the commission of murder, deportation, inhumane acts (forcible transfer), and persecution, as alleged in the indictment. The Trial Chamber also found that Stanišić and Simatović contributed to the common criminal purpose in relation to the crimes in Bosanski Šamac, but acquitted them of responsibility for the joint criminal enterprise on the grounds that it was not proven that either of them possessed the common intent to achieve the common criminal purpose.

The Appeals Chamber found that the Trial Chamber erred in assessing other contributions of Stanišić and Simatović to the common criminal purpose. The Appeals Chamber also found that they possessed the common intent to achieve the common criminal purpose. Accordingly, the Appeals Chamber found that Stanišić and Simatović are responsible as members of a joint criminal enterprise for the crimes committed by various Serbian forces in 1992 in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Bijeljina, Zvornik, Bosanski Šamac, Doboj, and Sanski Most, and for the crimes committed in 1995 in Trnovo and Sanski Most. They were also found responsible for the murder committed in Daljska Planina in Croatia in June 1992. The Appeals Chamber increased the sentences imposed on Stanišić and Simatović to 15 years imprisonment. The Appeals Chamber dismissed the remaining part of the Prosecution’s appeal.

The Presiding Judge stated that the delivery of this judgment marks a key point in the Mechanism’s mandate to continue carrying out the substantive, temporal, and personal jurisdiction of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (hereinafter: ICTY), which closed in 2017. This is the last appellate judgment on primary criminal acts from cases initiated before the ICTY.

VIDEO SHOCKING THE WORLD 

A video of the murder of six Srebrenica residents was shown for the first time during the trial of Slobodan Milošević. 

Six Bosniak boys and men from Srebrenica were brutally murdered by members of the Serbian unit "Scorpions" in July 1995 in Trnovo, shot in the back. The victims were Safet Fejzić (17), Azmir Alispahić (16), Sidik Salkić (36), Smail Ibrahimović (35), Dino Salihović (18), and Juso Delić (25).

Members of the "Scorpions" filmed the crime against the six civilians of Bosniak nationality. During the trial of Slobodan Milošević in 2005, the execution video was released, after which it went around the world.

The video shows several members of the "Scorpions", some wearing red berets, pulling six bound civilians out of a truck. With derogatory words and insults, they then take them into the woods, and in a clearing, they kill four of them individually and with bursts of fire from behind. The perpetrators then shot the victims lying on the ground in the head at close range. The remaining two prisoners were forced to carry the bodies, after which the "Scorpions" also killed them in a nearby dilapidated house.