UN war crimes tribunal orders retrial of Serb duo

UN judges in The Hague have ordered a retrial for two Serbs who were acquitted in 2013 of setting up and arming paramilitary gangs that committed atrocities during the 1990s Balkan wars.

Presiding judge Fausto Pocar overturned the acquittals of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, former allies of the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, and ordered both men detained pending their new trial.

Stanisic was head of Serbia’s state security service until Milosevic fired him in 1998, and Simatovic was his former deputy.