Logistic and personnel support provided to the Republika Srpska Army and the Serbian Army of Krajina by general Momcilo Perisic, in his capacity as the Yugoslav Army Chief of General Staff, contributed to a considerable extent to the commission of crimes in Sarajevo, Zagreb and Srebrenica, it is alleged in the indictment unsealed today.

At his initial appearance before the Tribunal, former Chief of General Staff of the VJ pleaded not guilty on all 13 counts of the indictment charging him with the shelling of Sarajevo and Zagreb and the crimes committed in Srebrenica in July 1995

Trial Chamber grants provisional release to former Chief of VJ General Staff, charged with crimes in BH and Croatia. The execution of the decision stayed for 24 hours to give the prosecution an opportunity to appeal the decision. Perisic's statements to the OTP investigators have taken up 35 CDs. Ramush Haradinaj left the UN Detention Unit in The Hague and went back to Pristina

The parties should be ready to proceed to trial by 23 April 2007. However, the Perisic trial is not likely to begin before October or November 2007

Prosecution asks the Trial Chamber to issue an order to the Serbian government compelling it to provide ‘key documents’ in the case of Momcilo Perisic, former chief of the VJ General Staff

The trial of Momcilo Perisic is scheduled to open on 1 October 2008 but the composition of the Trial Chamber that will try his case is still unknown because the UN Security Council has yet to decide to extend the term of office of the ICTY ad litem judges

The UN Security Council has yet to decide on the appointment of the ad-litem, temporary judges, and the opening of the trial of the former chief of the VJ General Staff Momcilo Perisic remains uncertain

The trial of Momcilo Perisic, former chief of the VJ General Staff, started today with prosecution’s opening statement. Perisic is charged with providing personnel, material and logistic support to the VRS and the SVK forces in the shelling of Sarajevo, the massacre in Srebrenica and rocket attacks on Zagreb

In his statement delivered without making the solemn declaration, former chief of the VJ General Staff Momcilo Perisic says his indictment is ‘unique in the history of international law of war’. ‘Never before have commanders and chiefs of General Staff been held criminally responsible for crimes committed by the armed forces of another state or entity’, General Perisic says

Aernout Van Lynden, former Sky News TV war correspondent, described what he saw and recorded in Sarajevo in 1992. He filmed the destroyed and burned buildings and the Sarajevans injured and killed in attacks. He also taped an interview with Ratko Mladic, who told him that he had ’ Sarajevo in the palm of his hand’

Australian general John Wilson says in 1992 he ‘got the impression’ that Zivota Panic, chief of the JNA General Staff, was Ratko Mladic’s superior when Mladic was the VRS commander. In August 1993, Panic was replaced by General Momcilo Perisic

The order to deploy parts of the Guards Brigade and special units of the Yugoslav Army in December 1993 in BH must have come from the General Staff, General Borivoje Tesic has said in his evidence at the trial of Momcilo Perisic. In radio and telephone communications, the VJ forces were to be called the ‘reserve troops of the VRS Main Staff’, confirmed the insider witness

At the trial of general Momcilo Perisic, former JNA officer recounts how the VJ 30th Personnel Center ‘took care’ of military personnel who remained in BH after the JNA withdrawal during the war

Dutch major Hubertus Bruurmijn claims that a modified air bomb, so-called ’sow’, that hit the inhabited Hrasnica area in July 1995 was fired from the direction of Ilidza, an area controlled by the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps. UN military observers were among the thirteen persons injured in the attack

Momcilo Perisic’s defense counsel has claimed the shell that hit the Simon Bolivar elementary school on 16 June 1995 in Dobrinja was fired from BH Army positions. A protected prosecution witness who took part in the investigation has explained why this was not possible

At the Momcilo Persia trial, British reporter Martin Bell describes the aftermath of the shelling and sniper attacks on Sarajevo and its residents between 1992 and 1995, when he covered the siege for the BBC

Milan Gunj, manager of the Rajac military resort, claims that Ratko Mladic and his entourage stayed in Rajac several times in the period from July 1997 to 2000. The witness has explained how food, personal hygiene items and other supplies Mladic needed were provided by the central military warehouse in Topcider, near Belgrade

Retired VJ general Djordje Curcin is testifying about Ratko Mladic’s stay in the VJ military resorts in Rajac and Stragari. Curcin has also described Mladic’s meetings with the chief of the VJ General Staff Momcilo Perisic

In his evidence at the trial of General Momcilo Perisic, prosecution witness Miodrag Starcevic has spoken about the establishment of the 30th and 40th Personnel Centers and their operation; they regulated the status of VJ officers deployed in the Serb armies in Bosnia and Croatia

Prosecution witness Miodrag Starcevic contends that there ‘is no legal basis’ on which the VJ may staff military units of other countries. Also, according to Starcevic, the VJ cannot grant rights formulated in line with military regulations of other countries

VJ colonel Rade Raseta claims that he was transferred to the SVK on the orders of Momcilo Perisic, chief of the VJ General Staff. The status and benefits of Serbian officers serving in Krajina were regulated through the 40th Personnel Center of the VJ General Staff

British general Rupert Smith has said that UNPROFOR in BH was a shield ‘for the defenders in the enclaves providing support for people by delivering humanitarian aid’. At the same time however, members of the UN Protection Force were hostages of Bosnian Serbs

Former UNPROFOR spokesman Michael Williams used Slobodan Milosevic as an example to show the difference between ‘diplomacy and the situation in the field’. Milosevic publicly advocated peace but at the same time secretly provided ‘substantial logistic support to Bosnian Serbs’, the witness contends

At the trial of General Momcilo Perisic, former OTP military analyst Richard Butler continues his evidence. Today the prosecution showed a number of videos in an effort to reconstruct the Srebrenica massacre in all its stages

Former BH ambassador to the UN Muhamed Sacirbegovic contends that Belgrade knew of the crimes in BH. The FRY, Sacirbegovic said, ‘was involved in the conflict’: it sent its ‘military and paramilitary troops to BH and provided them with equipment and materiel so that they would launch attacks against civilians’

Through the evidence of Muhamed Sacirbegovic, former BH ambassador to the UN, the prosecution is trying to prove that not only was Belgrade informed of the crimes perpetrated in BH by the Serb forces, but it helped them by ’supplying arms, military equipment and services to the Bosnian Serbs’

Former BH ambassador to the UN Muhamed Sacirbegovic (Sacirbey) has said again that the crimes in BH were perpetrated by the FRY with the help of its ‘agents, Serbs from Pale’

At the beginning of the cross-examination, Momcilo Perisic’s defense counsel suggested that in the proofing session in 2004 the prosecution tried to ‘direct the answers of witness Muhamed Sacirbegovic to get the evidence it wanted to hear’. What the prosecution ‘wanted to hear’ is that the VJ was connected with crimes perpetrated against Bosnian

General Perisic’s defence counsel has implied in his cross-examination of Muhamed Sacirbegovic, former BH ambassador to the UN, that the BH Army used ‘protected areas for training and arming its troops which then targeted Bosnian Serbs’ in order to get ‘a response’

Bosnian diplomat Muhamed Sacirbegovic has described how UNPROFOR ‘lost its power to pursue its mandate’. The self-defense of the peacekeeping troops became more important than protecting civilians and providing humanitarian aid

At the trial of Momcilo Perisic, a prosecution witness testifying under the pseudonym MP 11 stated that ‘it was completely normal for the VJ to support the VRS’ since there was ‘no difference between the two armies’.’It is all the same’, said the witness who fought in the Sarajevo battlefield in 1993 as a member of the VJ 72nd Special Brigade

Pyres Tucker, British Army colonel, believes that when the UN helicopters landed in Srebrenica to pick up the wounded, the fire that was opened on them came from positions ‘north of the river Drina, from Serbia’. The barrels on VJ cannons along the right bank of the river Drina were trained on Tuzla, he contends

Yesterday, in his cross-examination by Momcilo Perisic’s defense, British colonel Pyres Tucker said that ‘some elements among the Bosnian Muslims exploited the misery of their own people’. In his re-examination today, he explained he didn’t mean the BH Presidency when he said that, but ‘radical elements prepared to do anything it took’

At the trial of the former Chief of the VJ General Staff Momcilo Perisic, the prosecution has admitted into evidence a number of photographs taken on 18 July 1995 at the VRS Main Staff HQ in Crna Rijeka. The photographs show witness Ned Krajisnik with generals Ratko Mladic and Momcilo Perisic; today he confirmed their authenticity

Yesterday Ned Krajisnik confirmed that Ratko Mladic and Milan Gvero talked about ‘liberating Srebrenica’ in the presence of General Momcilo Perisic on 18 July 1995 in the VRS Main Staff resort. Today Krajisnik said he was ‘not sure’ of his own memory

The defense of the former chief of the VJ General Staff Momcilo Perisic will begin its case on 25 January, and the first witnesses will be called the next day. According to the defense’s estimates, the defense case should take 4 to 5 months

The last prosecution witness at the trial of Momcilo Perisic contends that 3,638 shell casings found at execution sites near Srebrenica had been manufactured ‘primarily’ in Serbia. Replying to a judge, Selsky said that 378 bullet casings were confirmed to have been manufactured in the Prvi Partizan ammunition factory in Uzice

General Momcilo Perisic’s defense is set to deliver the opening arguments on 22 February 2010. The first of the 61 witnesses will start evidence on the next day. The defense has a total of 180 hours to examine its witnesses

Momcilo Perisic’s defense claims that the former chief of the VJ General Staff didn’t have effective control and didn’t provide significant support to the Serb armies in Bosnia and Croatia. The VRS and SVK commanders had effective control. The arms were provided through ‘defense industry’ with the approval of the FRY Defense Ministry

Miodrag Simic is the first witness of the defense of former chief of the VJ General Staff Momcilo Perisic. Simic contends that the VJ never ‘co-operated’ with the VRS and the SVK. The Drina plan that assumed deployment of the Yugoslav army outside of FRY was a ‘deception’, the witness maintains

At the trial of General Momcilo Perisic, the prosecutor showed virtually identical paragraphs from the Drina Plan, drafted by the VJ General staff, and the plans produced by the Republika Srpska Army: both state that the first priority of the army is ‘make it possible for all Serb territories to be liberated and united in a single state’. The witness Miodrag Simic called the Drina Plan a ‘deception plan’

The prosecution contends that the VJ transferred its officers to the VRS and the SVK ‘without their consent’. In his evidence in the defense of General Momcilo Perisic Stamenko Nikolic denied this, claiming that ‘nobody was forced to go’ anywhere

Former head of the counter-intelligence department in the Security Administration of the JNA and VJ Branko Gajic gives evidence at the trial of General Momcilo Perisic. Gajic gave his version of the incident in Dobrovoljacka Street on 3 May 1992. According to Gajic, the JNA protected Izetbegovic from an assassination attempt prepared by Ejup Ganic

Defense witness Branko Gajic contends that in July 1995, General Momcilo Perisic visited the VRS Main Staff on General Ratko Mladic’s invitation. Gajic argued that Perisic was to help Mladic in solving a ‘serious problem’ caused by the blockade of the UNPROFOR Ukrainian Battalion

Former counter-intelligence officer in the JNA and VJ is giving evidence at the trial of General Momcilo Perisic. He contends that he learned about the crimes in Srebrenica ‘from the media’ in early August 1995. Judge Picard found it ‘hard to believe’. The judge pointed that half of the VRS officers came from the VJ, that they were paid by the VJ, yet they purportedly never reported to it

A signalman from the VRS Drina Corps is testifying in the defense of the former chief of the VJ General Staff. He contends that after Mladic’s attack on Gorazde in April 1994 he got Momcilo Perisic’s message in which he ‘kindly asked’ Mladic to ‘stop any further actions of the VRS’

Petar Skrbic, Mladic’s assistant in the VRS Main Staff, claims his commander met with Perisic and Lilic about the French pilots; Mladic at first claimed that ‘he didn’t know’ anything about the French pilots, but then admitted he had ‘played chess’ with them. Milosevic sent ‘frank and brazen messages’ to the Bosnian Serb leadership

At the trial of General Perisic, General Petar Skrbic claims there ‘were no legal provisions’ compelling the VJ personnel to perform their military service in other countries. Skrbic also said that there were no sanctions for officers who refused to obey the order and be seconded to the 30th Personnel Center of the VJ General Staff, which, in the prosecution’s view meant the Republika Srpska Army

Defense witness Dragan Vuksic likened Momcilo Perisic’s efforts to convince Ratko Mladic that he was wrong to ‘tilting against windmills in Holland’. Perisic ‘used his influence’ and ‘brought to an end the ugly affair’ of French hostages

According to witness Dragan Vuksic, former chief of the VJ General Staff Momcilo Perisic used his influence on Ratko Mladic to make him realize that the release of French pilots was not an ‘issue of his vanity’ but a problem which needed to be solved in order to achieve ‘peace in the region’

Testifying at the trial of General Momcilo Perisic, Mile Novakovic, former commander of the Serbian Army of Krajina, contends that the VJ officers would come to serve in the SVK for a few months, touring Krajina as ‘tourists to play at war"

General Mile Novakovic, former commander of the Serbian Army of Krajina, is testifying at the trial of General Perisic. Today he ‘allowed it may be true’ that in the first half of 1993 he turned to the VJ – and ‘most likely to the VRS, too’ for the Orkan rockets his army needed. Two years later, the Krajina Serb army used those rockets to attack Zagreb

Former commander of the SVK, Mile Novakovic commanded Operation Spider; his codename was Spider. The prosecution alleges that for the operation launched in Western Bosnia, Novakovic asked for ‘logistics and equipment’ support from the VJ

Testifying in defense of General Perisic, General Kadijevic claims that military equipment belonged to the federal government, not the Yugoslav Army, which could therefore not dispose of that property

At General Momcilo Perisic’s trial, Rajko Petrovic, an officer in the Serbian Army, talked about the ‘absurd’ sources of financing of the VRS that had nothing to do with the budget. Businessmen who wanted to avoid military service were a source of funds in the form of ‘donations’ to the army, Petrovic said. Money also came from the Bosnian Croats who ‘rented heavy artillery’ from Serbs

Sinisa Borovic, former chef de cabinet of the former chief of the VJ General Staff Momcilo Perisic, described his first encounter with General Mladic as ‘a negative experience’. Mladic ‘didn’t listen’ to Perisic and behaved ‘as if he were senior’, the witness recounted

Completing the cross-examination of General Sinisa Borovic, the prosecutor was striving to prove that General Momcilo Perisic had to have known about the crimes in Srebrenica but did nothing to prevent or punish them. The prosecutor contends that the information could have come from the VJ intelligence officers on temporary transfer in the VRS in the summer of 1995

The prosecution has sought to tender into evidence against General Perisic nine excerpts from Ratko Mladic’s diaries. According to the prosecution, the excerpts confirm that the former chief of the VJ General Staff provided personnel, logistic, financial and other support to the Serb armies in Bosnia and Krajina. General Perisic thus contributed to their crimes in Sarajevo, Zagreb and Srebrenica, the prosecution alleges

Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt, former co-chairman of the peace conference for the former Yugoslavia, testified at the trial of General Momcilo Perisic on his meetings with Slobodan Milosevic and Ratko Mladic in July 1995. Mladic treated his men as a ‘medieval feudal lord living in a dark world for whom all modern concepts were foreign’

Ivan Djokic, testifying as an expert witness of General Momcilo Perisic’s defense, says that the VRS obtained weapons from ‘FRY, Israel, Russia and Ukraine’ and from ‘brokers who bought them on the black market’. The VRS received its supplies from local municipalities and companies; FRY supplied some of the ammunition it used, about 450 tons

In the cross-examination of expert Ivan Djokic, called by General Momcilo Perisic’s defense, the prosecutor put it to him that the data he provided in his report were not exact. To illustrate the argument, he said Djokic stated in his report that in 1994 the VJ supplied about 200 tons of ammunition to the VRS, whereas prosecution documents show the quantities exceeded 1,000 tons

The defense of the former chief of the VJ General Staff has called all its witnesses. An additional prosecution witness will testify next in rebuttal of some of General Perisic’s evidence

On the eve of the closing arguments at the trial of the former chief of the VJ General Staff, the Trial Chamber granted the prosecution’s request and lifted the seal from ‘some documents’ exhibited by the prosecution. SENSE learned that those documents included the minutes from the meetings of the FRY Supreme Defense Council, where decisions were made to deploy the VJ in the wars in Croatia and BH

In his closing argument, prosecutor Mark Harmon described General Momcilo Perisic as ‘a shadow warrior’ who aided and contributed to the crimes ‘from his office’ in Belgrade, hiding behind a facade of denial of the FRY leadership which claimed that the FRY was not involved in any way in the conflicts in BH and Croatia. The minutes of the meetings of the FRY Supreme Defense Council were discussed for the first time in public today

At the end of his closing argument, the prosecutor called for a life sentence for the former chief of the VJ General Staff Momcilo Perisic. Perisic was on trial for aiding and abetting crimes perpetrated by the VJ soldiers serving in the VRS and the SVK in Sarajevo, Srebrenica and Zagreb. According to the prosecution, Perisic failed to prevent crimes or punish perpetrators

Novak Lukic, General Momcilo Perisic’s defense counsel, contends in his closing argument that the direct perpetrators of the crimes in Sarajevo and Srebrenica were part of the VRS chain of command, not the VJ, as the prosecution alleges. Lukic corroborated his claim with Perisic’s quote. ‘Those officers are not here, they are serving where they actually are...’, Perisic said at a meeting of the Supreme Defense Council

Noting that General Momcilo Perisic ‘defended his honor, the reputation of his army and the dignity of his nation’, defense counsel Novak Lukic asked for the acquittal of the former chief of the VJ General Staff on all counts in the indictment

By a majority vote, the Trial Chamber found the former chief of the VJ General Staff Momcilo Perisic guilty of aiding and abetting crimes against humanity and war crimes in Sarajevo and Srebrenica and of failure to punish those who ordered the rocket attacks on Zagreb

The defense of the former chief of the VJ General Staff Momcilo Perisic states in its notice of appeal that the majority in the Trial Chamber ‘criminalized war’, noting that ‘if Perisic’s judgment is upheld’ then ‘every military commander […] that gives military help to a foreign state […] during an international armed conflict’ is guilty of aiding and abetting crimes

The defense and the prosecution responded to the judges' question whether the support in the form of personnel, logistics and funds Perisic had provided to the Serb armies in Bosnia and Croatia was ‘specifically directed' at aiding and abetting crimes or if it merely supported their war effort

The Appeals Chamber will render its final judgment in the case against former chief of the VJ General Staff Momcilo Perisic on 28 February 2013. The prosecution didn’t file an appeal, while Perisic sought the reversal of the trial judgment. The Trial Chamber found Perisic guilty of aiding and abetting crimes in Sarajevo and Srebrenica and failing to punish those who committed crimes in Zagreb

In the statement of reasons attached to its judgment acquitting Momcilo Perisic, the majority in the Appeals Chamber, with Judge Liu dissenting, found that the assistance the VJ had provided to the VRS was ‘not directed specifically at committing crimes’ but at the general war effort of the Bosnian Serb army. The Chamber also found that Perisic didn’t have effective control over the SVK personnel responsible for the rocket attacks on Zagreb. Following the acquittal, the Appeals Chamber ordered Perisic’s immediate release

In his separate dissenting opinion appended to the judgment acquitting Momcilo Perisic, Judge Liu warned that the criterion of ‘specific direction’ – used by the majority to quash the trial judgment – has not been used consistently or rigorously in the jurisprudence. As he notes, it is not necessary to prove there was a ‘specific direction’ in order to prove aiding and abetting. To insist on ‘specific direction’, Judge Liu notes, ‘effectively raises the threshold…and allows those responsible for knowingly facilitating the most grievous crimes to evade responsibility for their acts’

Did the Appeals Chamber in the Perisic case follow the same pattern of restricting the definition of individual responsibility as in the case against Gotovina and Markac last year? If so, was the acquittal the only possible outcome?

What is the ‘specific direction’ of the judgments acquitting Gotovina, Markac and Perisic? What is the majority in the Appeals Chamber aiding and abetting here?

The prosecution has called on the Appeals Chamber to reject the standard of ‘specific direction’ and to apply a correct legal standard in the reconsideration of the judgment in which Momcilo Perisic, former chief of the Yugoslav Army General Staff, was acquitted of aiding and abetting crimes in Sarajevo and Srebrenica

In a response to the prosecution’s request for the reconsideration of Momcilo Perisic’s acquittal, the defense notes that the Appeals Chamber ‘doesn’t have the power to reconsider a final judgment’. The defense concludes that the prosecution has failed to present legally sound arguments or any basis that would allow the reconsideration

The prosecution has responded to the motion in which Momcilo Perisic’s defense asked the judges not to reconsider Momcilo Perisic’s acquittal because the judgment was ‘final and certain’. The right to a ‘final’ judgment is not ‘absolute’ and shouldn’t ‘trump the manifest injustice’ to the victims of the crimes in Sarajevo and Srebrenica, the prosecution argued

The prosecution’s motion to the Appeals Chamber for the reconsideration of the judgment against former chief of the Yugoslav Army General Staff Momcilo Perisic has been denied. Perisic was acquitted of aiding and abetting the crimes in Sarajevo and Srebrenica. ‘The interest of the victims’ is not a legal ground for reconsideration, the judges note in their decision