The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) on Thursday acquitted pending appeal the former chief of the Serbian State Security Service (SDB), Jovica Stanisic, and the former commander of the SDB special operations unit, Franko Simatovic, accused of war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina committed by Serb paramilitary units.
The trial chamber ordered that they be immediately released from the Scheveningen detention centre.
In their closing arguments in January, the prosecution asked that Stanisic and Simatovic be sentenced to life imprisonment.
The ICTY found by majority vote that Stanisic and Simatovic had no intention to contribute to an alleged joint criminal enterprise aimed at removing the majority of non-Serbs from large parts of Croatia and Bosnia between 1991 and 1995.
Under the indictment, apart from Stanisic and Simatovic, the enterprise comprised former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and former wartime Bosnian and Croatian Serb leaders Ratko Mladic, Radovan Karadzic, Biljana Plavsic, Milan Martic, Goran Hadzic and Milan Babic, Serbian Radicals leader Vojislav Seselj, and militia commander Zeljko Raznatovic aka Arkan.
