here - Humanitarian Law Center/Fond za humanitarno pravo

prosecution of organised crime, the same can not be said for the Office of the War Crimes
Prosecutor.
From its founding in 2003 to the present day, the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor has
shown readiness only to indict immediate perpetrators, and not mid-ranking and high-ranking
Yugoslav People’s Army, Yugoslav Army and Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Serbia
(MUP) officials, who ordered crimes or whose subordinates committed crimes that they, as their
superior officers, knew of.
To date, the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor has only indicted two low-ranking officers and
one mid-ranking officer. 10 Lack of willingness on the part of the Office of the War Crimes
Prosecutor to prosecute high-ranking members of the Yugoslav People’s Army, Yugoslav Army
and MUP, despite the existence of clear evidence against them, and the continuing practice of
bringing them to court only as witnesses, was particularly obvious in the Lovas case. For the first
time since the beginning of processing of war crimes in Serbia, the Office of the War Crimes
Prosecutor's practice was criticised by the trial panel handling this case. Explaining the reasoning
behind the judgement reached on 26 June 2012, the presiding judge in the Lovas case stated that
the panel found that the Second Proletarian Guard Mechanized Brigade of the Yugoslav People’s
Army was to be held primarily responsible for the attack on Lovas and everything that had
happened during the attack, adding that a valuable body of evidence had been presented during
the trial, which “leaves open the possibility for the prosecutor to seek justice for family members
of the victims, by bringing charges against individuals who were included in the original
indictment, but left out of the amended indictment.” “We have heard in this courtroom”, the
judge added, “the full names of some other actors involved in the critical events, some of them
even appeared before us as witnesses, so the prosecutor should fulfil the promise he gave in his
closing argument and look into their criminal responsibility as well, if we are to ensure fairness
both to the victims and the accused.” She added that an important segment of the events in Lovas
– Croatian civilians moving out of the area controlled by Yugoslav People’s Army – had been
omitted from the indictment.
So far, the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor has brought no charges for command
responsibility. However, in 2010 the trial chamber presided over by judge Tatjana Vuković,
10
The accused are as follows: 1) Miodrag Dimitrijević, appointed by the Sectoral HQ of Valjevo TO as
coordinator of combat operations in the village of Lovas in 1991, sentenced in 2012 by a trial court (subject to
appeal) to 10 years imprisonment for war crimes against the civilian population, and 2) Toplica Miladinović,
commander of the 177th VTO in Peć, who is on trial for a crime against the civilian population in the village of
Ćuška/Qyshk committed in 1999, 3) Radoslav Mitrović, commander of the 37th detachment of the PJP, who, in
2010, was acquitted by a final judgment of charges of committing a war crime against the civilian population (Suva
Reka/Suharekë case).
6