The Humanitarian Law Center (HLC) considers the first-instance acquittal of Milenko Živanović, former commander of the Drina Corps of the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS), issued by the Trial Chamber of the Higher Court in Belgrade, to be legally unsustainable and a dangerous judicial precedent.
The reasoning of the verdict, presented by the presiding judge Mirjana Ilić — that the commander of the Drina Corps did not issue orders for the forced displacement of the Bosniak civilian population from Srebrenica, but only combat orders against opposing armed units — represents a revisionist attempt to reinterpret judicially established facts and to deny the findings of international court judgments that carry the weight of international law.
Although the indictment filed by the Office of the War Crimes Prosecutor (OWCP) against Milenko Živanović was substantially limited in comparison to the indictment brought by the Prosecutor’s Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina — by selectively including only a small number of orders and actions in which Živanović participated — the HLC considers that even this narrowed indictment was proven.
By framing the indictment in such a restricted way, the OWCP minimized the responsibility of the former commander of the Drina Corps. However, there is no basis for the Trial Chamber’s conclusion that he issued only combat orders, nor for the view that there is no evidence of his responsibility for the forced displacement of the Bosniak civilian population — a conclusion that implicitly denies that such displacement from Srebrenica ever occurred.
