Judges Burton Hall, Seon Ki Park and Solomy Balungi Bossa

Two days after the Appeals Chamber ordered a re-trial for Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, a new trial chamber was appointed.

The former State Security Service will be tried by the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, an institution which will take over jurisdiction from the tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda. In his decision today, Theodor Meron, the Mechanism president, appointed Judge Burton Hall from the Bahamas to preside over the Chamber.The other two members are Seon Ki Park from South Korea and Solomy Balungi Bossa from Uganda. Judge Hall is the only one with previous experience at the Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia where he had presided in the case against former Bosnian Serb police chiefs, Mico Stanisic and Stojan Zupljanin. The other two newly appointed judges have sat in the trial chambers at the Rwanda Tribunal.

The new trial chamber will retry the former Serbian secret service chiefs, who are charged with crimes against non-Serbs from 1991 to 1995. The crimes were part of the joint criminal enterprise aimed at the ethnic cleansing of large parts of Croatia and BH. As alleged by the prosecution, the crimes were committed by the Serbian State Security Service units such as the Red Berets, the Scorpions, Arkan’s Tigers and the Krajina police. The Trial Chamber had acquitted the two accused but the Appeals Chamber quashed the judgment.

During the re-trial the new Trial Chamber will have to apply proper legal standards formalized by the Appeals Chamber two days ago, to the entire evidence. The newly appointed judges will thus have to clearly establish the ‘existence and scale’ of the joint criminal intent and to assess if the accused shared it. Also, the Trial Chamber will have to disregard the standard of ‘specific direction’ in considering Stanisic’s and Simatovic’s responsibility for aiding and abetting the crimes.

On Friday, 18 December 2015 at 2:30 pm Stanisic and Simatovic will appear before judge Hall to enter their plea on the counts in the indictment against them.

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