here - Humanitarian Law Center/Fond za humanitarno pravo

At the first-instance trial, at the Military Court in Nis, Danilo Tešić and Mišel Seregi admitted
having committed the offences they were charged with. The trial resulted in their conviction on
11 October 2002. The defendants were sentenced to imprisonment as follows: Zlatan Mančić to
seven years, Rade Radojević to five years, Danilo Tešić to four years and Mišel Seregi to three
years.
Upon hearing the appeals lodged by both parties, the Supreme Military Court in Belgrade, on 22
May 2003 handed down a ruling modifying the trial court judgment by increasing the prison
terms for the accused. 160
However, the VSS reversed this final judgment and remanded the case for a new trial 161 .
The retrial opened on 6 June 2007 at the District Court in Niš. Following the replacement of the
judges in the trial chamber including the presiding judge, the retrial began anew in 2010.
During six days of hearings held in 2012 the court heard seven witnesses. At the main hearing,
held on 3 February 2012, seven witnesses, 162 who at the relevant time were members of the VJ,
holding different ranks in the military hierarchy, gave their statements. None of them
corroborated the allegations set forth in the indictment. The subsequent hearings were either
postponed or dedicated to procedural issues, irrelevant for deciding on the merits of the case.
Some of the defense lawyers stood out for their misbehaviour, something which was not
adequately corrected by the presiding judge. On 3 August 2012, the court pronounced its
judgment, convicting Zlatan Mančić, Rade Radojević, Danilo Tešić and Mišel Seregi. The
presiding judge failed to provide a summary of the reasons for the court’s decision, saying, “it is
unnecessary because the accused are not present, so there is no need to bore the audience with it”.
Analysis of proceedings
Proceedings in this case took more than 10 years to complete, even though the indictees admitted
having committed the crime. All participants in this trial are to blame for such excessively long
proceedings: the court itself, in the first place, for showing no interest in speeding up the
proceedings; defense lawyers, who, with their conduct and the evidence they put forward helped
significantly to delay the proceedings; and the Deputy Senior Public Prosecutor of Niš, whose
duty was to draw attention to the undue delay in the proceedings, but who was extremely passive
in this matter, in addition to being late in amending the indictment.
Excessively lengthy proceedings in cases that involve the gravest breaches of international
humanitarian law, undermine both the victim’s and public’s confidence in the judiciary. Also,
160 Mančić was sentenced to 14 years and Radojević to nine years imprisonment.
161 As the HLC does not have the VSS’s ruling on reversal, it does not know the reasons behind it.
162 Witnesses Ivan Midović, Branislav Kovačevič, Dražen Dobrić, Pavle Rudić, Božidar Delić, Janko Grandić and
Vlatko Vuković.
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