Special Operations Unit

Petar Djukic, a former high-ranking Serb police officer in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, told the retrial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Tuesday and Wednesday that military volunteers who came to Bosanski Samac in Bosnia in April 1992 were brought by political parties and not by Serbian State Security, SDB.

On January 15, 2000, Zeljko Raznatovic was having a drink with friends at the upmarket InterContinental Hotel in Belgrade when a man walked up to them and opened fire at close range with a semi-automatic pistol.

Raznatovic - better known around the world as the Serbian paramilitary leader Arkan - was hit by a bullet in the eye, and died on his way to hospital. He was 47.

Witness Dejan Lucic told the retrial of Serbian State Security Service officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Thursday that the defendants did not send Dragan Vasiljkovic, alias Captain Dragan, to Croatia in 1991 to set up a training camp for rebel Serb fighters.

The UN-backed Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals has announced that it has extended Jovica Stanisic's provisional release until April 30, 2020 because of his continuing illness.

It said that the extension was possible because "there is no indication that he has ever engaged in any practice undermining the administration of justice".

Two defence witnesses at the retrial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague this week offered differing interpretations of the links between the Serbian State Security Service, SDB and the US Central Intelligence Agency in the 1990s.

The prosecution at the trial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Thursday used excerpts from Ratko Mladic's war diary in an attempt to prove that the Serbian State Security Service, where the defendants were senior officials, sent paramilitary units from Serbia to Bosnia and Herzegovina in autumn 1995 and had control over

The prosecution in the retrial of former Serbian State Security officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague argued on Tuesday that defence witness Dragoslav Krsmanovic gave different evidence to the court than when he first testified at the original trial in 2011, putting his credibility in question.

Belgrade Higher Court on Thursday convicted Nikola Vida Lujic, a former member of the Special Operations Unit, an elite Serbian special forces unit also known as the Red Berets, of raping a Bosnian women in Brcko on June 20, 1992, and sentenced him to eight years in prison.

A retired Serbian State Security Service officer told the retrial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Wednesday that he met the defendants in November 1994 on Petrova Gora mountain in Croatia, which at that time was part of the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina established by rebel Croatian Serbs.

A defence witness at former Serbian Security Service officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic's retrial said he knew Serbian paramilitary units were operating in Croatia in 1991 but didn't know about crimes they committed.