Closed Hearings at Serbian Security Chiefs’ Trial Cause Mistrust

The latest hearing in the case against Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic was held at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Tuesday, when the first defence witness in their retrial for wartime crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia gave testimony behind closed doors.

Closed hearings have become a feature of the trial of Stanisic and Simatovic, and the public has only had the chance to hear a few witnesses' testimonies, said Iva Vukusic, an international humanitarian law researcher at Utrecht University.

The men's initial trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, and now the retrial at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, have been "the most closed and non-transparent process I have ever seen before the Tribunal and Mechanism", Vukusic told BIRN.

"It is not just a defence issue. Evidence and witnesses of the Hague prosecution have mainly been unavailable to the public as well," she said.

The court has granted protective measures for several witnesses who will testify in the next few weeks, including the first witness who has already started testifying, meaning that the public will not have access to these hearings.

The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals told BIRN that the requests for protective measures were filed by Serbia.

"I would mention that this is a temporary decision until the parties have filed written motions concerning this issue, to enable the continuation of the process," said Mechanism spokesperson Helena Eggleston.

Stanisic, the former chief of the Serbian State Security Service, and Simatovic, a former intelligence officer with the service, are charged with the persecution, murders, forced transfer and...

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