The Serbian President and Parliament Speaker criticized the sentencing of former Serbian State Security Service (RDB) chiefs on war crimes charges by the UN war crimes court in the Hague.

RDB Chief Jovica Stanisic and his immediate subordinate Franko Simatovic were sentenced to 12 years in prison each at the end of their re-trial before the UN Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (successor to the ICTY) for war crimes committed during the wars in the former Yugoslavia.

President Aleksandar Vucic told reporters that the international court changed its rules and practices in the case of two Croatian generals which led to their acquittal along with former FRY military chief General Momcilo Perisic and Stanisic and Simatovic at their original trials. “The court said at the time that it has to see personal influence, that there has to be an order or any kind of action calling for crimes,” he said. According to Vucic, the UN court has changed its practice again with the ruling against the RDB chiefs.

Parliament Speaker Ivica Dacic expressed certainty that Stanisic and Simatovic did not committ any crimes personally. He said the court ruling is an attempt to lay collective blame on Serbia. He added that he knows Stanisic personally and that had a positive effect on political decision makers in the 1990s, getting them to “act rationally”. Dacic said the court in the Hague has jurisdiction over everything except trials of the “people responsible for the NATO aggression against FR Yugoslavia”.