Milosevic spymasters handed longer jail terms

(ANSA-AFP) - THE HAGUE, MAY 31 - A UN court sentenced two of late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic's spy chiefs to 15 years in jail on appeal Wednesday in the last major Hague war crimes trial from the 1990s Bosnian conflict. Judges rejected appeals by former state security service boss Jovica Stanisic and his deputy Franko Simatovic against their 2021 convictions, and added three years to their original sentences of 12 years.

Stanisic, 72, and Simatovic, 73, were convicted of backing a Serb death squad that terrorised the Bosnian town of Bosanski Samac in 1992 with killings, rapes and looting. The pair had challenged their convictions for the war crime of murder and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, forcible transfer and deportation, and appealed the sentence. Prosecutors had appealed against their acquittal on several other charges, and asked for a longer sentence from the court, known as the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT).

"The appeals chamber dismisses the appeals by (Jovica) Stanisic and (Franko) Simatovic... and imposes a sentence of 15 years" on each, head appeals judge Graciela Gatti Santana said. The case has been running for two decades, making it the longest and the last at the UN tribunal dealing with crimes from the wars that tore apart Yugoslavia after the fall of communism. (ANSA-AFP).

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