Milenko Zivanovic in an online video stream from the Hague Tribunal in 2013. Photo: ICTY.
The Court of Appeals in Belgrade said in a statement on Wednesday that it has upheld the first-instance acquittal of wartime Bosnian Serb Army Drina Corps commander Milenko Zivanovic for crimes related to Srebrenica.
The initial judgment last year was strongly criticised by rights groups, who said it was an attempt to rewrite history and distort the truth about Bosnian Serb forces’ actions in Srebrenica.
On November 24, 1992, Zivanovic issued an order that stated: “Launch an attack using the main body of troops and major equipment to inflict on the enemy the highest possible losses, exhaust them, break them up, or force them to surrender and force the Muslim local population to abandon the area of Cerska, Zepa, Srebrenica, and Gorazde.”
However, the Court of Appeals upheld the verdict acquitting Zivanovic of ordering the forcible relocation of the Bosniak civilian population from areas under the Drina Corps’ area of responsibility in 1992.
Zivanovic was also acquitted of participating in the forcible relocation of several thousand Bosniak civilians from the UN-protected zone of Srebrenica in 1995. He was cleared of the charge that on July 12, 1995, he provided provide buses and petrol to deport the Bosniak civilians, mainly women, children and elderly people, from Srebrenica during the genocide.
The Court of Appeals said that during the trial, the Public Prosecutor’s Office “did not submit to the court any evidence on the basis of which it could be established that in the period from the beginning of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992 to July 11, 1995, there was a forcible relocation of the Muslim civilian population from the area of Srebrenica”.
It also said that the Public Prosecutor’s Office did not provide evidence to prove that Zivanovic “undertook any actions in that period by which he participated in the forced displacement of the civilian population of Srebrenica”.
The court statement added that the initial trial established that none of the orders Zivanovic issued to subordinate units were “aimed at the forcible relocation of the Bosniak civilian population from the Srebrenica protected zone”.
It said that his orders exclusively concerned “combat tasks that ordered, primarily, defensive actions and, with the aim of liberating the aforementioned territories, actions against the armed forces of the opposing side in the conflict – the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina”.
The Court of Appeal’s decision is final and there is no right of appeal.
The Serbian Prosecutor’s Office indicted Zivanivic in December 2021. At the same time, he was also charged by prosecutors in Bosnia and Herzegovina .
However, he did not turn up for plea hearings in Sarajevo. During his trial in Belgrade, Zivanovic denied bearing responsibility for the crimes.
The Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre NGO, which monitors war crime trials, described the first-instance acquittal of Zivanovic in July 2025 as “a dangerous judicial precedent”.
The HLC argued that the verdict’s reasoning “represents a revisionist attempt to reinterpret judicially established facts [about Srebrenica] and negate the findings of international judgments [at the Hague Tribunal] that have the force of international law”.
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.
Read the full article at Balkan Insight (BIRN) →
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