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The acquittal of former Bosnian Serb Army Drina Corps commander Milenko Zivanovic is “legally unsustainable and represents a dangerous judicial precedent”, the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre, HLC, said on Wednesday.
Belgrade Higher Court on Tuesday acquitted Zivanovic of ordering and participating in the forcible relocation of the Bosniak civilian population from Srebrenica during the Bosnian Serb Army’s “Krivaja 95” offensive to seize Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia.
This operation ended with the killings of more some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys and the expulsion of some 40,000 women, children and elderly people, which were later classified as genocide by international courts.
The HLC said that the reasoning in the verdict, which said Zivanovic did not issue orders for the forced relocation of the Bosniak civilian population from Srebrenica, but only combat tasks against enemy units “represents a revisionist attempt to reinterpret judicially established facts and negate the findings of international judgments that have the force of international law”.
During his trial, Zivanovic denied responsibility for the crimes. He claimed that on June 15, 1995, he was notified that he was longer the Drina Corps’ Commander, officially handed over duties on July 13, and, in the interim, was “a retired commander”.
He said he left the area on the night between July 11 and 12 and went to his brother’s house in the town of Vlasenica.
The Serbian Prosecutor’s Office indicted him in December 2021 for ordering the forced relocation of the Bosniak civilian population and participating in their forced relocation from Srebrenica. At the same time, Zivanovic was also charged by prosecutors in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The HLC said that although the indictment in Serbia was “fundamentally limited” in comparison to the one in Bosnia, “by the selective selection of orders and actions in which he participated”, the charges were still “proven” in court.
Zivanovic’s successor as commander of the Drina Corps, Radislav Krstic, was sentenced by the Hague Tribunal in 2004 to 35 years in prison for Srebrenica crimes. Krstic was the first person convicted of genocide by the UN war crimes court.
Zivanovic testified as a witness at the Hague Tribunal trial of Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic in 2013, and insisted there was never a plan to expel Bosniaks from Srebrenica or kill them.
