Jovica Stanišić | intelNews.org

Senior Serb intelligence officials given prison sentences for war crimes

July 1, 2021 by Joseph Fitsanakis Leave a comment

Jovica Stanisic Franko Simatovic

TWO SENIOR FORMER OFFICIALS in the now defunct domestic security apparatus of Serbia have been given prison sentences totaling 24 years, after being found guilty of war crimes by a United Nations court. The crimes of the two officials stem from the Yugoslav Wars, a series of bloody ethnic conflicts that followed the breakup of the former Yugoslavia in 1991.

The two former officials, Jovica Stanišić, 70, and Franko “Frenki” Simatović, 71, deny that they trained Serbian elite police units in methods of exterminating non-Serb populations in various regions of the former Yugoslavia. The two men were initially acquitted of all charges against them by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). But the initial ruling was quashed, and the two men were tried again, this time by United Nations Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, which took over ICTY’s operations after its mandate ended.

Stanišić directed the State Security Service (SDB), which operated under the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia as the country’s primary domestic security agency. Simatović was an intelligence officer who, from 1991 until 1998, commanded the feared Special Operations Unit, known as JSO. The JSO was an elite police force that operated under Stanišić’s SDB. Prosecutors accused the two men of working under direct orders by Serb President Slobodan Milošević, with the aim of ethnically cleansing non-Serbian populations. Milošević died in 2006 in prison at The Hague, Netherlands, where he was held facing charges of genocide and crimes against humanity.

On Wednesday, each of the two men were given 12 years in prison. Simatović has already served eight years in prison, and Stanišić close to five. Both continue to deny the charges against them, and their lawyers said they would appeal the convictions.

► Author: Joseph Fitsanakis | Date: 01 July 2021 | Permalink

Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with former Yugoslavia, Franko Simatovic, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Jovica Stanišić, State Security Service (Serbia), State Security Service Special Operations Unit (Serbia), war crimes, Yugoslav Wars

News you may have missed #0105

September 14, 2009 by intelNews Leave a comment

Trial of Serb former intelligence chiefs opens today. The trial of Jovica Stanišić, Director of Serbia’s State Security Service from 1990 until 1998, and Stojan Župljanin, commander of the Bosnian Serb police during the Bosnian war, opens today at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, in The Hague. As intelNews has reported before, at least two eponymous CIA agents have admitted that Stanišić was a CIA collaborator from 1991 until 1998.
Lithuanian Prime Minister was KGB agent, says board. A Lithuanian commission tasked with uncovering pro-Moscow informants and intelligence agents during the country’s communist period, has concluded that Kazimira Danutė Prunskienė, Lithuania’s first Prime Minister after the country’s 1990 declaration of independence from the Soviet Union, secretly collaborated with the Soviet KGB.
Congo says it won’t execute Norwegian alleged spies. Norway’s foreign minister says he has been assured that the two Norwegians who were sentenced to death by a Congolese military tribunal last week on spying charges will not be executed.

Filed under A specialized intelligence website written by experts, since 2008 Tagged with Bosnia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian Serbs, Bosnian War, CIA, Democratic Republic of the Congo, espionage, former Yugoslavia, informants, International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), Jovica Stanišić, Kazimira Danutė Prunskienė, KGB, Lithuania, News, news you may have missed, Norway, Serbia, State Security Service (Serbia), Stojan Župljanin

Comment: Former Serb head spy was CIA collaborator

March 2, 2009 by intelNews 5 Comments

Jovica Stanišić

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org |
From 1990 until 1998, Jovica Stanišić was the Director of Serbia’s State Security Service, a notorious intelligence unit operating within Serbia’s Interior Ministry. As intelligence chief for Serbian President Slobodan Milošević, Stanišić was responsible for thousands of agents, who were seen as forming the core of Milošević’s security state. In 2003, following the assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić, who had extradited Milošević to The Hague, Stanišić was arrested and delivered to The Hague. He is currently being tried by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for his role in war crimes during the Yugoslav Wars. Jovica Stanišić has denied any wrongdoing and, remarkably, his defense rests on his claim that he was in fact “the CIA’s man in Belgrade” from 1991 until 1998.