After Mico Stanisic, former Republika Srpska interior minister, announced he would go to The Hague voluntarily, the indictment against him was unsealed at the Tribunal. He is charged in ten counts with crimes against humanity and violations of laws and customs of war


Mico Stanisic is charged with participation in a joint criminal enterprise in BH from 1 April until 31 December 1992 as a co-perpetrator. The objective of the enterprise was the “permanent removal and ethnic cleansing – by force or other means – of Bosnian Muslims, Croats and other non-Serbs from the territory of the planned Serbian state”.

Mico Stanisic and other participants in the joint criminal enterprise whose names are listed in the indictment committed murder, persecution, deportations, extermination, torture, inhumane acts and cruel treatment in order to achieve that objective. Those acts are qualified as crimes against humanity and violations of laws and customs of war in the ten counts of the indictment.

From 1 April 1992, when he became the minister in the newly-established Serbian Ministry of the Interior in BH (MUP RS), Mico Stanisic participated in the “joint criminal enterprise”, as the indictment alleges, by “commanding and directing members and agents of the MUP RS who were engaged in implementing the objective of the joint criminal enterprise or who participated in the perpetration of the crimes” or by “encouraging and facilitating and thus instigating the commission of crimes against Bosnian Croats, Bosnian Muslims and other non-Serbs by not taking any active steps to investigate, arrest, and/or punish the perpetrators.”

It is interesting to note that Mico Stanisic was mentioned for the first time at the ICTY as a suspect in the spring of 1995, when a Trial Chamber – at the request of the then Chief Prosecutor Richard Goldstone – sent a formal request to the judiciary of Bosnia and Herzegovina for the deferral of the investigation launched in Sarajevo against Radovan Karadzic, Ratko Mladic and Mico Stanisic. The indictments against Karadzic and Mladic were issued on 25 July 1995, and Stanisic had to wait his turn until the last batch of the OTP indictments, signed and submitted for review by Carla del Ponte late last year. The indictment against Stanisic was confirmed on 25 February 2005 by Judge El Mahdi.

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