The UN court in The Hague will hand down its verdict in the war crimes retrial of Serbian State Security officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic after they appealed against their initial conviction.
This report documents torture, killings, rapes, forced expulsions, and other war crimes committed by Serbian and Yugoslav government forces against Kosovar Albanians between March 24 and June 12, 1999, the period of NATO's air campaign against Yugoslavia. The report reveals a coordinated and systematic campaign to terrorize, kill, and expel the ethnic Albanians of Kosovo that was organized by the highest levels of the Serbian and Yugoslav governments in power at that time.
The Tanzanian branch of the UN residual "Mechanism" for criminal tribunals has marked ten years of existence in silence and without a trial. That of Félicien Kabuga, which resumes this week, is taking place in The Hague (see box). This costly UN body appears to be over-sized, uninteresting to the public, silent and opaque a "white elephant" of international justice.
Yugoslav troops, Serbian paramilitaries and local Serb policemen tortured and killed dozens of Croats and ethnic Hungarians in the village of Erdut in 1991. Few have been prosecuted so far, but Hague Tribunal documents reveal names of potential suspects.
The prosecution appealed for former Serbian State Security officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic to be convicted of participating in a joint criminal enterprise to forcibly remove non-Serbs from parts of Croatia and Bosnia.