The Court docket of Appeals in Belgrade mentioned in a observation on Wednesday that it has upheld the first-occasion acquittal of wartime Bosnian Serb Military Drina Corps commander Milenko Zivanovic for crimes linked to Srebrenica.
The initial judgment closing Twelve months became strongly criticised by rights groups, who mentioned it became an are attempting and rewrite historical previous and distort the reality about Bosnian Serb forces’ actions in Srebrenica.
On November 24, 1992, Zivanovic issued an portray that acknowledged: “Originate an attack the expend of the most foremost body of troops and main instruments to inflict on the enemy the very supreme losses, expend them, break them up, or force them to resign and force the Muslim local inhabitants to abandon the dwelling of Cerska, Zepa, Srebrenica, and Gorazde.”
On the other hand, the Court docket of Appeals upheld the decision acquitting Zivanovic of ordering the forcible relocation of the Bosniak civilian inhabitants from areas below the Drina Corps’ dwelling of accountability in 1992.
Zivanovic became also acquitted of collaborating within the forcible relocation of lots of thousand Bosniak civilians from the UN-safe zone of Srebrenica in 1995. He became cleared of the worth that on July 12, 1995, he supplied provide buses and petrol to deport the Bosniak civilians, mainly females, children and elderly other folks, from Srebrenica at some stage within the genocide.
The Court docket of Appeals mentioned that at some stage within the trial, the Public Prosecutor’s Office “did no longer submit to the courtroom any evidence on the premise of which it can perhaps well well be established that within the length from the beginning of the battle in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992 to July 11, 1995, there became a forcible relocation of the Muslim civilian inhabitants from the dwelling of Srebrenica”.
It also mentioned that the Public Prosecutor’s Office did no longer provide evidence to current that Zivanovic “undertook any actions in that length correct through which he participated within the pressured displacement of the civilian inhabitants of Srebrenica”.
The courtroom observation added that the initial trial established that no longer one of many orders Zivanovic issued to subordinate models had been “geared in direction of the forcible relocation of the Bosniak civilian inhabitants from the Srebrenica safe zone”.
It mentioned that his orders completely eager “combat initiatives that ordered, basically, defensive actions and, with the design of freeing the aforementioned territories, actions against the defense force of the opposing facet within the battle – the Military of Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
The Court docket of Allure’s decision is closing and there is now not any such thing as a staunch of appeal.
The Serbian Prosecutor’s Office indicted Zivanivic in December 2021. At the the same time, he became also charged by prosecutors in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
On the other hand, he did no longer flip up for plea hearings in Sarajevo. At some level of his trial in Belgrade, Zivanovic denied bearing accountability for the crimes.
The Belgrade-basically based Humanitarian Legislation Centre NGO, which monitors battle crime trials, described the first-occasion acquittal of Zivanovic in July 2025 as “a harmful judicial precedent”.
The HLC argued that the decision’s reasoning “represents a revisionist are attempting and reinterpret judicially established facts [about Srebrenica] and declare the findings of global judgments [at the Hague Tribunal] that have the force of global law”.
Zivanovic’s successor as commander of the Drina Corps, Radislav Krstic, became sentenced by the Hague Tribunal in 2004 to 35 years in jail for Srebrenica crimes. Krstic became the first person convicted of genocide by the UN battle crimes courtroom.
Zivanovic testified as a survey at the Hague Tribunal trial of Bosnian Serb political chief Radovan Karadzic in 2013, and insisted there became never a opinion to expel Bosniaks from Srebrenica or extinguish them.