UN court issuing appeal ruling in long-running trial of 2 Serbs accused of crimes in Balkan wars

By MIKE CORDER
Associated Press

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Two allies of late Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic convicted of aiding and abetting murder and other crimes committed by Serb paramilitaries in a Bosnian town in 1992 are set to hear the results of their appeal, 20 years after they were first indicted by a United Nations court. Wednesday’s appeals decision by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals in the retrial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic brings to an end the longest-running war crimes prosecution dating back to the Balkan wars of the early 1990s. The length of the case underscores the complexity of successfully proving war crimes in international courts.