The Hague

Croatian Serb advocacy orgnisations and other human rights organisations on Wednesday started a six-day campaign to commemorate the Serbian civilian victims of the Croatian army's 1995 Operation "Oluja" ("Storm").

The operation terminated an ethnic Serb rebellion but also resulted in some 200,000 Serbs being expelled or fleeing the Knin region in southwest Croatia.

Citing the statute of limitations, the public prosecution in Banja Luka told BIRN it had terminated investigations in February this year in five cases against one of more unidentified persons concerning the destruction of six mosques between March and July 1993.

Behgjet Pacolli, the leader of New Kosovo Alliance (AKR) was speaking on the occasion of the 11th anniversary of the verdict of the International Court of Justice in The Hague, which then "determined that the Declaration of Independence of Kosovo did not violate international law."

Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Dendias in an interview with the local media has expressed his support for direct talks between Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, describing the Turkish leader as "a hospitable and cordial person on a personal level."

The decision by the UN court in The Hague last month to uphold the life sentence handed down to former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic takes the number of life terms imposed for involvement in the Srebrenica genocide to five.

Zoran Vukovic at the UN war crimes court in The Hague in December 1999. Photo: EPA/COR MULDER.

"Montenegro called for Vukovic's extradition in 2016. The Serbian [justice] ministry made no decision on extradition," said Tea Gorjanc Prelevic, head of Human Rights Action.

A change in the law between 2003 and 2007 allowed him to do so by declaring that relatives of Srebrenica victims could be buried alongside them at Potocari. Then the law changed back, limiting the cemetery to only those killed in July 1995.

Such details, however, were lost on Twitter users who in June wrote: "Emir Suljagic, exhume your father from the cemetery in Potocari!"

After two of its former leaders went to stand trial in The Hague, the Democratic Party of Kosovo, PDK wants to revive its fortunes by choosing a new figurehead who can improve on its recent poor performance in elections.

"We can always determine who is responsible during the wars, but this is neither the time nor the place. I think it is extremely important to point out to the citizens of Serbia that the rules and court practice in the Markac and Gotovina cases have changed," Serbian President said.

The former chief of Serbian State Security, Jovica Stanisic, and his deputy Franko Simatovic, were sentenced to 12 years in prison each on Wednesday by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in The Hague for aiding and abetting the commission of wartime crimes in the Bosanski Samac area of Bosnia in 1992.