UN judge orders retrial of two Milosevic allies

United Nations judges have ordered a retrial for two former allies of the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic.

Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic were previously acquitted in 2013 of setting up and arming Serb paramilitary gangs that committed atrocities in Bosnia and Croatia during the 1990s Balkan wars.

Presiding Judge Fausto Pocar, of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, overturned the acquittals on the basis that the trial judges had said they could only be guilty if their actions were “specifically directed” to assisting a crime.

Jurisprudence at the court has since stated that “specific direction” is not a necessary element of aiding and abetting.

Stanisic was head of Serbia’s state security service until Milosevic fired him in 1998. Simatovic was his former deputy.

Prosecutors said they were part of a criminal organisation that also included Milosevic, whose aim was to drive non-Serbs out of parts of Bosnia and Croatia.

Milosevic himself died in his U.N. cell in 2006 before judges in his long-running trial could reach verdicts on charges that he fomented violence throughout the Balkans in the 1990s.