Expert: Tribunal’s Verdict in Simatovic and Stanisic Case Leaves Mixed Impressions

Jovica Stanisic (Piroschka van de Wouw/Pool via AP)

James Gow, a professor at King’s College in London, has said that the ruling of the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague according to which the former head of Serbia’s State Security Service, Jovica Stanisic, and his deputy, Franko “Frenki” Simatovic, have been sentenced to 12 years in prison each for crimes in Bosanski Samac, has left him and everyone else with mixed impressions.

“The first degree acquittal verdict that had been delivered after the initial trial has been amended, but on the other hand, Stanisic and Simatovic have been found guilty [only] of a limited number of cases compared to what was listed in the indictment,” Gow told Voice of America (VoA) and added that the two were convicted for crimes which could had been proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

Gow called the Tribunal’s ruling very important because it confirms the findings and interpretations according to which Stanisic and Simatovic “were pulling strings and orchestrating the majority of paramilitary violence” committed in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The verdict is also important, he added, because it is the final ruling in the series of trials that had to do with war crimes committed in former Yugoslavia.

The Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague delivered the verdict on June 30, in a retrial of Stanisic and Simatovic, sentencing the two to 12 years in prison each for the crimes committed by the Red Berets against the non-Serb population in Bosanski Samac in the spring of 1992. Stanisic and Simatovic were sentenced for crimes against humanity and the violation of laws and customs of war.