Dossier: “Serbian Volunteer Guard”
The crimes committed by the Serbian Volunteer Guard (SDG/the Guard), a group formed by Željko Ražnatović (Arkan), and its links with the Serbian police, military and political establishment, were an integral part of the indictments of the ICTY’s Office of the Prosecutor against Slobodan Milošević, Goran Hadžić, Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović.
The trials of Milošević and Hadžić were terminated because they had died before the judgments were passed, but witness statements and evidence presented during the trials contain a wealth of materials about the activities of the SDG. In addition, the ICTY’s Office of the Prosecutor filed an indictment against SDG commander Željko Ražnatović aka Arkan for crimes committed in the area of Sanski Most. In the trial judgment following the retrial of Stanišić and Simatović, the Trial Chamber of the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT) established that the SDG was involved in murders, persecution and forced displacement in the area of the so-called Serbian Autonomous Region of Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srem (SAO SBZS) in 1991 and 1992, in Bijeljina and Zvornik in 1992, and in Sanski Most in 1995. Nevertheless, not a single member of the SDG has been prosecuted for these crimes to date.
On Thursday, March 23, 2023, the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) will present its fifteenth Dossier, entitled “Serbian Volunteer Guard” (Dossier). The presentation will be held in the large hall of the Media Center in Belgrade (Terazije 3, 2nd floor), starting at 12 PM.
On Monday, February 27, 2023, three decades have passed since the crime in Štrpci. Thirty years ago, members of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), at the railway station in Štrpci (BiH), took 20 passengers from the train on the Belgrade-Bar route and killed them. In the past year, courts in Serbia and Bosnia and Herzegovina have issued three first-instance convictions for this crime. However, the Humanitarian Law Center (HLC), Women in Black, the Sandžak Committee for the Protection of Human Rights and Freedoms and the Youth Initiative for Human Rights remind that even after 30 years, the families of the victims have not received justice.
To the President of the Republic of Serbia,
