Jovica Stanisic i Franko Simatovic in the courtroom

Just one day before the 30-day deadline expired, the prosecution filed its appeal against the judgment acquitting the two former chiefs of the Serbian State Security Service, Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic. They were charged with taking part in the joint criminal enterprise aimed at ethnically cleansing large parts of Croatia and BH. The Trial Chamber acquitted Stanisic and Simatovic, ruling that they did support the units that committed the crimes, deportation, forcible transfer and persecution, but that their support wasn’t ‘specifically directed’ to the commission of the crimes.

The Trial Chamber applied the standard used in Momcilo Perisic’s appellate judgment. The prosecution focused on that fact in the second of the three grounds of appeal. According to the prosecution, the Trial Chamber erred when it concluded that Stanisic and Simatovic were not guilty of aiding and abetting crimes. The notice of appeal argues that the judges applied an ‘unnecessary and incorrect element’ when they demanded that the prosecution prove the ‘specific direction’ to aid, encourage and morally support the commission of crimes. Even if the ‘incorrect’ conclusion from Perisic’s judgment were to be accepted, no reasonable trial chamber would conclude that Stanisic and Simatovic didn’t aid and abet the crimes they were tried for, the prosecution argued.

In the first ground of appeal, the prosecution argued that the Trial Chamber erred when it failed to conclude that the accused had shared the intent to expel non-Serbs from large parts of Croatia and BH. The goals of the joint criminal enterprise were to be implemented through crimes. The prosecutor contends that the judgment didn’t offer a ‘reasoned opinion’ for the responsibility of the accused. The judges did not consider ‘clearly relevant evidence’ on the existence of the joint criminal enterprise and Stanisic’s and Simatovic’s involvement in it. The prosecution also noted the ‘relevant legal standards were misapplied’ when the Chamber assessed the intent of the accused to perpetrate crimes. The evidence hasn’t been considered ‘in its totality’.

Finally, in the third ground of appeal, the prosecution notes that the Trial Chamber erred when it failed to find that Stanisic and Simatovic ‘significantly contributed’ to the implementation of the joint criminal enterprise in the so-called Serb Autonomous Region of Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srem through crimes committed by Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan’s unit and the local Territorial Defense, in Zvornik, Bijeljina and in Sanski Most.

For all those reasons, the prosecution contends that the acquittal of Stanisic and Simatovic should be quashed and the two accused should be found guilty of taking part in the joint criminal enterprise. Stanisic and Simatovic should be ‘sentenced accordingly’, the prosecution argued.

The notice of appeal was filed before 1 July 2013 and it will be considered by the Tribunal’s Appeals Chamber, not the so-called Mechanism for the International Criminal Tribunals, which will become operational in The Hague on 1 July 2013.

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