Franko Simatović

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.

Lawyer Wayne Jordash told the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals as the trial resumed on Tuesday that the defence will call witnesses who will confirm that Jovica Stanisic, the former chief of the Serbian state security service, was not in command of Serbian paramilitary or police units in Bosnia or Croatia during the war, as the indictment claims.

Two out of six Bosniak men from Srebrenica who were shot by members of the Scorpions paramilitary unit in 1995 have now been identified after their remains exhumed from a mass grave at Rogoj mountain pass in the Trnovo municipality in June last year, it was announced on Friday.

Defence lawyers for former Serbian security service officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic told the Hague court that notorious paramilitary leader Arkan’s fighters operated as part of the Bosnian Serb police in 1995.

A witness told the trial of former Serbian security officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic that he saw Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan, shoot a captive dead in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995.

A witness told the Hague retrial of former Serbian security service chiefs Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic how he survived a shooting by paramilitaries led by Serbian warlord Arkan in Bosnia in 1995.

Former Serbian security service official Franko Simatovic’s defence told the UN court that a journalist who testified that the service controlled Serbian paramilitaries in the Croatian and Bosnian wars was not credible.

Journalist Dejan Anastasijevic told the trial of former Serbian state security chiefs Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic that the units they controlled fought to implement Slobodan Milosevic’s plan to seize parts of Bosnia and Croatia.

Former Serbian State Security Service official Franko Simatovic’s lawyer told the UN court that the service had nothing to do with wartime violence in Bosnian municipalities which Serb forces took over in spring 1992.

An ex-member of the Red Berets unit told the retrial of former Serbian security service chiefs Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic that the unit persecuted and murdered Bosniaks in the Doboj area in 1992.