War crime

The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals said it is investigating whether Ratko Mladic, who is in custody pending his war crimes appeal, broke any rules by speaking on a Serbian television show by phone.

From 1999 to 2018, Kosovo courts heard 48 war crimes cases with a total of 111 defendants standing trial, said a new report published by the Humanitarian Law Centre.

Serbian activists rallied on the 14th anniversary of two soldiers’ unexplained killings at a Belgrade barracks where war crimes suspect Ratko Mladic was allegedly hiding, while the men’s families demanded progress in the investigation.

The United States threatened Monday to arrest and sanction judges and other officials of the International Criminal Court if it moves to charge any American who served in Afghanistan with war crimes.

The brothers Bytyqi traveled to Serbia to fight in the ranks of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) during the 1999 war in Kosovo. They were captured by Serbian authorities shortly after the war and sentenced to 15 days in prison for having illegally crossed the state border between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and Albania.

Slobodan Karagic’s 12-year prison sentence for war crimes against civilians in the Doboj area in 1992, including the rape of minors and the unlawful arrests of Bosniaks, was upheld on appeal.

The defence at the war crimes trial of former Serbian State Security official Franko Simatovic insisted he was not in command of the Red Berets unit in 1995 when it allegedly committed crimes.

Kosovo’s Special Prosecution filed an indictment against a Serbian fighter who allegedly committed war crimes in the village of Mala Krusa/Krushe e Vogel during a deadly two-day attack in 1999.

Republika Srpska has set aside about 10,000 euros this year for Bosnian Serbs indictees in the custody of the Hague war crimes tribunal.

Former Serbian State Security chief Jovica Stanisic’s defence told his trial in The Hague that there was no evidence that paramilitary forces who committed war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia were under the service’s control.