LOCAL PRESS

 

Vucic: Attempt at distracting attention from Serbia’s success (Beta/TV Pink)

Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has assessed that the statements from Pristina on declaring Serbian IDs illegal is only a political attempt at distracting attention from Serbia’s success, including the opening of negotiating chapters. “What would you do if you were in the ruling parties in Pristina, when you have tear gas every day and, even if you are a majority, you can’t enter the assembly? These are their internal matters. We will protect our people,” Vucic told TV Pink.

 

Dacic does not expect traps in Chapter 35 (Politika)

Following the opening of the first two negotiating chapters, Serbia has transferred from the road to the highway towards Brussels. In fact, it has entered the straight-line, final and hardest EU accession phase, where it is expected to harmonize fully its law and practice with the European standards in order to become an EU member. As regards Chapter 35, for Serbia the most demanding chapter, on Kosovo, Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic tells Politika that it is not a replacement for the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue. “The dialogue will continue in Brussels, along with the mediation of Federica Mogherini, so I don’t expect any traps through these negotiations when it comes to Kosovo,” says Dacic. Asked whether additional deadlines may appear in regard to Chapter 35, Dacic says that when it comes to Kosovo, there are no additional deadlines. “Everything that is agreed in Brussels will be implemented by our side. Therefore, this doesn’t pose a problem for us. On the other side, it is impossible for the EU to determine a united position that would not be neutral in status in this phase when there are five countries that haven’t recognized the unilaterally declared independence of Kosovo,” says Dacic, adding that we are continuing these negotiations in good faith and with a status neutral position.

 

Selective passing of citizens with Serbian IDs (RTS)

In the course of Tuesday, Kosovo residents with Serbian IDs of the Serbian Interior Ministry’s police administrations were not able to enter Serbia proper or the province via certain administrative crossings. Pristina says that at issue is the implementation of the agreement on freedom of movement from 2011. The Head of the Office for Kosovo and Metohija Marko Djuric confirmed for RTS that the Kosovo authorities stopped last night the implementation of this decree last night. Several passengers had been stopped at the Merdare crossing over the IDs that were issued by the Serbian Interior Ministry’s police administrations relocated from towns in Kosovo. They were not allowed to enter or depart Kosovo. “One of our passengers from Brnjica didn’t have a Kosovo ID so she showed the Serbian one that expires in 2020. They simply didn’t let her enter Serbia proper,” says Bogoljub Marinkovic, a bus driver from Gracanica. The Kosovo police states that the rule on using personal documents at the administrative crossings is not new but dates from 2011, based on the Belgrade-Pristina agreement signed in 2011. “The agreement that we are implementing specifies what IDs can be used. These are IDs issued by the Serbian authorities, but crossing is not allowed with other IDs or documents that have Kosovo insignia, i.e. that are issued by parallel structures,” Kosovo police spokesperson Baki Kelani explains. The decision by the Kosovo police is a surprise in the normalization process between Belgrade and Pristina. “We don’t know what to do, what kind of information to give to passengers, whether they can travel with these IDs,” says Marinkovic.

This decision is not hindering traffic at Merdare, and the Kosovo Serb representatives have been acquainted with it. Some of them say that they discussed this problem with the Kosovo Prime Minister, whom they asked to stop the implementation of this decision. They say the Prime Minister agrees with this and they are expecting a written order to police units in the field.

 

Drecun: Thaqi’s maneuver (RTS)

The Chairman of the Serbian parliamentary Committee for Kosovo and Metohija Milovan Drecun says that the events at certain crossings in Kosovo and Metohija represent Hashim Thaqi’s maneuver with which he is constantly provoking. “He is doing this all the time, since he fears he could be on the list of the special court,” says Drecun. Asked when teargas will stop flying in the Kosovo Assembly, Drecun says that at issue is a joint game by the Kosovo authorities.

 

Prosecution analyzing extensive documentation on KLA (Tanjug)

The Serbian War Crimes Prosecution has announced today that underway is the analysis of an extensive documentation of the Military-Security Agency (VBA) on the KLA operations in 1998 and 1999, assessing as malicious the allegations by Serbian MP Milovan Drecun that “the people from the Prosecution do not know about this documentation”. The Prosecution is conducting technical processing and analysis of extensive documentation submitted by the VBA, at the request of the War Crimes Prosecutor, to the Prosecution in the period between July and September 2015, reads the statement. The content of the VBA documentation has not been available to the War Crimes Prosecution, so the War Crimes Prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic had personally requested this documentation towards collecting information and relevant data that are used or will be used in certain proceedings, reads the statement. An analytical approach to this documentation, dealt by the deputy prosecutors for war crimes and a military analyst, is one of the sources of the prosecution for proceeding in war crimes cases, reads the statement. The Prosecution assessed as “arbitrary and malicious” allegations by Drecun that at issue is “bad will, bad intention and deliberate concealing of evidence for the crimes against the Serbs”.

 

Hague’s sudden blow on the heads of Serbian secret services (Politika)

Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, former heads of the Serbian State Security Service, carelessly departed for The Hague two days ago, convinced they would only hear out on Tuesday the acquitting verdict and return immediately to Belgrade as free men. So says their Belgrade attorney Mihajlo Bakrac, who was stunned by what followed yesterday in the ICTY. Two very bad pieces of news waited for Stanisic and Simatovic there. The first one - that the Appeals Chamber annulled the trial verdict according to which they had been acquitted for war crimes and that they will have a re-trial on all counts of the indictment. The second one was worse than the first, and it concerns the basis on which the Appeals Chamber overturned the first verdict. They changed the standard according to which they will be tried, i.e. the court will subject them to far stricter criteria in the new trial when it comes to their criminal intent and the manner in which it is estimated whether their acts were aimed at helping others in committing a war crime.

Instead of returning home, they will be detained until further notice and will stay there in all probability until a new trial. This is the first time in the ICTY’s history to have a re-trial on all counts of the indictment. Politika’s interlocutor who is an expert for humanitarian law says that such turn greatly changes the course of the trial for Stanisic and Simatovic, since they will be tried according to a different standard that has stricter criteria. He notes that they were acquitted in the first degree during a time of the validity of the standard according to which aiding in committing an offense is proved if the acts are concretely aimed at aiding in committing a crime. That standard was valid only for one year and at that time Momcilo Perisic, Ramush Haradinaj, Ante Gotovina, as well as Stanisic and Simatovic in the trial proceedings, were acquitted. However, according to this interlocutor, Stanisic and Simatovic will be tried according to the old, far stricter standard that implies that even if someone sold flour to the army could be convicted of genocide, in case some unit members whom he had fed, were convicted of genocide. Simatovic’s attorney Mihajlo Bakrac tells Politika: “Such a decision has been passed for the first time in the Tribunal’s history. After 13 years of trials and search for international justice, they are at the beginning again.” Bakrac says a serious re-trial will last at least five-six years, and adds: “If the Appeals Chamber says that the first degree chamber and judges did everything wrong and bad, should this go over the backs of the defendants?” He says it would be a scandal if they weren’t released pending trial. “We will make a proposal for temporary release. I expect the minimum that the court can do is to release them pending trial,” says Bakrac.

A man for whom CIA offered guarantees

Thanks to the U.S. press, which was particularly interested in Stanisic’s case at one time, it was discovered that the CIA in the case of Milosevic’s head of the State Security Service made a precedent by offering guarantees to The Hague Tribunal for Stanisic in order to help him receive temporary release from Scheveningen. The CIA submitted to The Hague a confidential document from which it emerged that Stanisic had worked for the Central Intelligence Agency “by helping efforts to reach peace in the region”, and that he had never received a single Dollar from the Americans for his “services”. This has led to numerous speculations that the CIA was in fact responsible for the acquittal of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic and that it had thus returned him the debt. In a Los Angeles Times article dated 2009, compiled on the basis of numerous interviews of CIA agents and with the consent of the agency, there also appeared the claim that Stanisic had given the Americans the maps of the bunkers built by the Yugoslav companies for Sadam Hussein.

 

Ljajic: We will offer guarantees for release pending trial (Danas)

The Chairman of the National Council for Cooperation with the ICTY Rasim Ljajic tells Danas that he cannot comment the court’s decisions, but that this is a second case for the Appeals Chamber to accept a re-trial to defendants. “The first time it was in the Haradinaj case when this indictee was acquitted. This is the second case. One cannot foresee when the new trial will begin, or how long the procedure will last, but it is realistic to expect that Stanisic and Simatovic will be released pending trial,” says Ljajic. He adds that the indictees had always returned to The Hague when they were requested, and that they proceeded by court orders. Ljajic says that the state of Serbia, once a new trial is scheduled, will offer guarantees for both Stanisic and Simatovic for release pending trial “since they voluntarily surrendered to the ICTY”.

 

REGIONAL PRESS

 

EU will seek reform of B&H Constitution (FTV)

The draft resolution on Dayton will find its place before the representatives of the EU Parliament as part of the plenary session’s agenda, which is being held in Strasbourg, and by which this EU legislative body marks 20 years since the signing of the Dayton Peace Agreement in Paris.

Although,  initially only one draft resolution was sent for procedure, the draft by the European Parliament Rapporteur for B&H Cristian Dan Preda, since yesterday, four more drafts were submitted by different parliamentary groups. Before the start of the session all five documents are to be compiled into one single document. The draft commends the current progress of B&H on its European path, but also urges B&H to continue its reform course and calls on the EU institutions to support them in it. As necessary, in addition to socioeconomic reforms, all draft resolutions emphasize the reform of the Constitution, contained in the Annex 4 of the Dayton Agreement. “Annex 4 needs to be changed, because it is slowing down B&H on its path. Its reform is needed in order to have the functional state that would benefit all its citizens”, reads the draft resolution which was submitted by a group of deputies led by Igor Soltes. It also invited the EU institutions to find a way to make changes to the Constitution that would help B&H to accelerate its path to Euro-Atlantic integration. All plans, among other things, emphasize the importance of further implementation of Annex 7, in which all citizens have the right to return to their pre-war places of residence. As they point out, after the drafts are compiled into one and the final document gets adopted, the document will be sent to the addresses of all European institutions, with the request to assist the implementation of the resolution.

 

Izetbegovic: SDA for postponing of the local elections in B&H (Nezavisne)

The Presidency of the Party of Democratic Action (SDA) at the session that lasted more than four and a half hours decided to make every effort to postpone the local elections in B&H, which should be held in 2016, confirmed the President of the SDA, Bakir Izetbegovic, to the reporters, saying that the local elections should be held together with the General Elections in 2018.

 

Izetbegovic: To simplify the structure of B&H through merging Cantons (Nezavisne)

Member of the B&H Presidency Bakir Izetbegovic said to the press in Sarajevo that the easiest way to simplify the structure inside B&H is to merge cantons. Namely, the media published that Izetbegovic and Chairman of the Presidency of B&H and the President of Croat Democratic Union (HDZ) B&H Dragan Covic agreed on common attitudes when it comes to reorganization of the Federation of B&H and the formation of four cantons. Izetbegovic also highlighted that he and Covic do not have mandate to reach such decisions concerning all citizens of the Federation of B&H. Izetbegovic presented the data that B&H has over 600 parliamentarians, 14 legislative bodies, 13 constitutions and 167 ministers, adding that there is no intention to create ethnically clean cantons while merging the cantons. Merging of cantons, Izetbegovic concluded, would counteract the stories that new entities will be created.

 

Signing of an agreement between the RS MoI and SIPA prolonged (Fena)

For today announced signing of the agreement on operational cooperation and coordination of the Ministry of Interior (MoI) of Republika Srpska (RS) and the State Investigation and Protection Agency (SIPA) on efficient future cooperation has been postponed. The reason for this is the inability of the Republic of Serbian Police Director Gojko Vasic to attend the signing. The agreement could be signed tomorrow or Friday. The RS Prime Minister Zeljka Cvijanovic had said that the cooperation already exists, and after Wednesday, when they define all the procedures, it will be functional again. That the existing agreement on operational cooperation and coordination of police structures should be refined and precisely defined, agreed on December 13, in Banja Luka, B&H Security Minister Dragan Mektic, Minister of Internal Affairs of RS Dragan Lukac, SIPA Director Perica Stanic and RS Police Director Gojko Vasic.

The meeting was organized as an effort to overcome the crises in the relations between the RS MoI and SIPA, after the SIPA members conducted a search of the police station in Bosanski Novi, and the RS government and parliament adopted conclusions on suspending the cooperation with SIPA and the B&H Court and the Prosecutor’s Office.

 

Mladic witness claims Bosniaks staged market attack (Nezavisne)

At Ratko Mladic’s war crimes trial, a protected witness alleged that the deadly attack on Sarajevo’s Markale market in 1994 was carried out by the Bosnian Army, not Serb forces. Protected witness GRM-116, who testified in Mladic’s defense at the Hague Tribunal on Tuesday, claimed that the attack on the market that killed 66 civilians in February 1994 was approved by the then Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic. The witness said that as a member of the Biseri special security unit from 1992 to 1994, he worked on security at the Bosnian presidency building. He said that during that time he could hear what Izetbegovic and others said during meetings. According to the witness, Izetbegovic’s main goal was to ensure Western intervention to help the Bosniaks “by creating mass suffering in Sarajevo and Srebrenica”.

He said that Izetbegovic was heavily influenced by Islamic community leader Mustafa Ceric. According to the witness, Ceric convinced Izetbegovic that “losses must be suffered”. Speaking about the attack on the Markale market, GRM-116 testified that was “Ceric’s idea, which was carried out by generals Sefer Halilovic and Mustafa Hajrulahovic, alias ‘the Italian’”. “I was there when Alija [Izetbegovic] approved this,” he said. At the next meeting, the witness said that Halilovic reported the first attempt was a failure because the mortar hit the roof of the market. “Alija told them to try again. They went and soon we heard what happened with Markale,” he said.

 

INTERNATIONAL PRESS

 

Kosovo hits out at EU for not relaxing visa requirement (Reuters, 16 December 2015)

PRISTINA: Kosovo accused the European Union on Tuesday of fuelling extremism in the impoverished Balkan country by refusing to relax visa regulations for Kosovars in 2016.

Kosovo remains the only country in the Balkans whose citizens need a visa to travel to most of the EU. The government had told the citizens it expected a favourable decision this month and a possible end to the requirement next year. "These absurd and deliberate delays not only encourage extremism in the country but also will increase frustration among the citizens of Kosovo," Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Hashim Thaci wrote on his Facebook page. The citizens of Kosovo's neighbours - Albania, Bosnia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Serbia, - have travelled without a visa in the Schengen zone since 2010. The decision came as Kosovo faces its worst political crisis since declaring independence from Serbia in 2008. Opposition parties have been releasing tear gas in parliament every session for the past two months to protest an accord brokered by the EU to help relations between Kosovo and Serbia.

On Monday, the parliament passed the 2016 budget in a side room after the opposition lawmakers released tear gas. Police have arrested 13 opposition MPs for releasing the gas.

Kosovo seceded from Serbia in 1999 when NATO carried out 11 weeks of air strikes to halt the killing and expulsion of ethnic Albanians by Serbian forces trying to crush an insurgency.

But the EU remains divided on Kosovo sovereignty, which is not recognised by five of the bloc's 28 members. And some EU officials are sceptical of offering Kosovo visa-free regime, after some 70,000 Kosovars sought asylum in the EU in just the six moths to March 2015.

(Reporting by Fatos Bytyci, editing by Larry King)

 

Serbia's long trek into the EU (DW, 15 December 2015)

Serbia's official EU accession negotiations have begun in Brussels. But for accession to happen, the country will have to undertake fundamental reforms. And then there is the Kosovo question.

From Serbia's point of view, there is no alternative to membership of the European Union: Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic has often said that Serbia's strategic goal is to join the EU, tirelessly repeating that he sees no other future for the small Balkan nation. He also promised that reforms would be pushed through quickly. "In four years, by the end of 2019, Serbia will have completed its share of the work," Vucic announced a few days ago during talks with Johannes Hahn, EU Commissioner for Neighborhood Policy & Enlargement Negotiations, in Belgrade. Whether or not the EU is ready to accept Serbia into the club will not depend on Belgrade, said Vucic.

A way to escape economic misery

Vucic sees EU membership as the country's only future

Serbia desperately needs investment. The unemployment rate is around 22 percent, and half of the country's young people are jobless. Economic growth, which was negative last year, is expected to be about 0.5 percent in 2015. The average income in Serbia is about 380 euros ($417) a month, and as a result, many young, well-educated Serbs leave the country in search of a better life abroad, mostly in Western Europe and North America. Serbia was ranked number 67 of 180 on Reporters Without Borders' 2015 World Press Freedom Index, and the Washington-based organization Freedom House described the country as having only a "partially free media." In a September 2014 survey conducted by Germany's Konrad Adenauer Foundation, nine out of ten Serbian journalists said that censorship and self-censorship were common.

The fight against corruption

At the same time, corruption has penetrated every level of Serbian society. Transparency International ranked the country 78 of 174 on its 2014 Corruption Index, between Montenegro and Tunisia. "Blic," Serbia's largest daily newspaper, recently published a "corruption price list" that ran from 300 euros ($330) for your choice of schools, through 3,000 euros for a doctoral thesis, to 1,000 euros both for a building permit and for preferential treatment in a hospital delivery room. Five years ago an anti-corruption agency was created in Serbia, but its success has been rather meager. "Our biggest problem is that we cannot prosecute or punish the cases that we find," complains Vladan Joksimovic, the agency's deputy director. Those accused of corruption simply have to pay a small financial penalty and the case is forgotten. This year, eleven cases of high-level political and administrative corruption were reported. One of them went to court.

Difficult Kosovo question

And then there is the question of Kosovo. Eight years ago, the country declared itself independent of Serbia - something that Belgrade has never accepted. Serbia's constitution clearly defines Kosovo as part of Serbia, and five of the EU's 28 member states have also refused to recognize Kosovo's independence, as have Russia and China. At the moment, recognition of Kosovo is not an official prerequisite for Serbian EU membership, but it is no secret that several member states, including Germany, would like to create that obligation. That said, Ksenija Milenkovic, director of the Serbian European Integration Office in Belgrade, leaves no doubt that the constitution's clear definition of Kosovo as an integral part of Serbia is not simply rhetoric. "If recognition of Kosovo ever becomes an official term of EU membership, our answer will be a clear - No!" she says resolutely, echoing the sentiments of Prime Minister Vucic.

The EU is quite aware of this. Speaking to DW, the Expansion Commissioner Hahn referred to a "process of normalizing relations between Serbia and Kosovo," rather than recognition. He declined to define at exactly what point relations could be considered "normal."

Hahn has to step around the delicate issue of Kosovo

Other and miscellaneous questions

The complexity of the Kosovo question is also the reason that accession negotiations in Brussels are to begin with discussions on chapters 32 (Financial Controls) and 35 (Other Issues) of the so-called chapters of acquis that outline membership talks. Accession talks usually begin with discussions on judiciary, fundamental rights and security issues, but the innocuous sounding "Other Issues" chapter will actually cover negotiations on normalizing Serbia's relations with Kosovo. Germany's lower house, the Bundestag, insisted that negotiations be opened on the Kosovo question and that this be the last chapter closed before negotiations end. It remains totally unclear as to how long these negotiations will actually take. Though Prime Minister Vucic would like to celebrate his country's EU membership as soon as possible, Ksenija Milenkovic of the European Integration Office is much more reserved. "We have no illusions. We know that expansion is not a priority on the EU agenda right now," she told DW. "At least not with this Commission." On assuming office last November, European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker stated that expansion would be on hold while he is in office. His term lasts until 2019.

 

Macedonia open to changing its name to end 24-year dispute with Greece (The Guardian, 16 December 2015)

The Macedonian Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski says he would be open to changing his country's name, raising hopes of an end to one of the world's most unusual diplomatic spats – a 24-year linguistic dispute with Greece, according to The Guardian. Gruevski says he is willing to reopen dialogue on the issue with Greece – providing that any potential name-change is put to a plebiscite in Macedonia. "We are ready to discuss, to open dialogue with them, and to find some solution," Gruevski said in an interview with the Guardian. At its founding in 1991, when Macedonia declared independence from Yugoslavia, the country formally referred to itself as the Republic of Macedonia – to the fury of many Greeks, who feel that their northern neighbors stole the name from the eponymous Greek province that lies directly to the south of the Macedonian-Greek border. The dispute prompted Greece to block its neighbor from joining both NATO and the EU, and led the UN to refer to Macedonia as the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia until the disagreement is resolved.

 

Croats Vanishing From Bosnia, Bishop Says (BIRN, by Rodolfo Toe, 16 December 2015)

Twenty years after the end of the war, Catholic leaders say the Croatian community in Bosnia and Herzegovina is disappearing fast as a result of large-scale emigration.

Croats have been migrating en masse from Bosnia since the end of the 1992-5 war, which poses a threat to their continued existence as a national community, Catholic Church leaders say.

"Even if it is still difficult to be sure about the exact figures, we can affirm that no more than 420,000 Croats live today in Bosnia," Pero Sudar, auxiliary bishop of the Archdiocese of Vrhbosna, which includes the capital city, Sarajevo, told BIRN on Tuesday. In 1991, some 760,000 Bosnians declared themselves as Croats in the last official census conducted in the country. "We estimate that 11,800 Croats left Bosnia for good in 2014. This process has been going on for years and is becoming even more problematic since Croatia entered the EU," Sudar told BIRN. Bosnian Croats have Croatian passports, which entitles them to live and work in the European Union. In a country where the unemployment rate exceeds 40 per cent, according to the World Bank, this is a major incentive to emigrate. Even though Bosnia has not held an official census for years, the Catholic Church collects its own statistics from the registries of new births, marriages and funerals. “In the past 20 years, Bosnia has lost more than 45 per cent of its Croat population; in Republika Srpska, the number has decreased by 90 per cent,” Franjo Komarica, the archbishop of Banja Luka and current President of the Bishop's conference of Bosnia, said on Monday while presenting the conclusions of the Church's Commission, “Justitia et Pax” ["Justice and Peace"], marking the 20th anniversary of the Dayton Peace Agreements. “Justitia et Pax” was founded after the war to conduct research on the topics of peace and justice in Bosnia, with a focus on the living conditions of its citizens and their human rights. Bosnian Croat parties have long used the fall in numbers of Croats to demand the creation of a third entity in Bosnia alongside the majority-Serb Republika Srpska and the mainly Bosniak [Muslim] Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. “Bosnian Croats are as minority in both entities of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is obviously a situation that impedes equality between the three constitutive peoples of the country”, Bozo Ljubic, secretary of the Croat National Council, told BIRN on Tuesday. According to Ljubic, “increasing the territorial and cultural autonomy of Bosnian Croats, together with economic reforms, will be crucial in stopping their massive emigration and could also send a message to those living abroad that Bosnia and Herzegovina is a state that takes care of their needs, convincing some of them to come back,” he added. Critics of this Bosnian Croat rhetoric have accused the Croat parties of ignoring the plight of ethnic Croats in the Republika Srpska and of focusing too much on the Federation entity.

“The President of the HDZBiH [the main Croat party in Bosnia] and Croat member of the Presidency, Dragan Covic, has a strong political connection with Milorad Dodik, the President of Republika Srpska,” Aleksandar Trifunovic, editor of the magazine Buka in Banja Luka, told BIRN. “Covic keeps on repeating that the Croats are discriminated against in Bosnia and Herzegovina but never says anything about those living in Republika Srpska, which is really contradictory,” Trifunovic added. The issue of the expulsion of Bosnian Croats from the RS during the war in the 1990s is often marginalized “to protect the pact between the two leaders – a pact based on the idea of opposing together the centralising power of Sarajevo,” he continued.

 

Hague Court Orders Retrial for 2 Aides to Milosevic (The New York Times, by Marlise Simons, 15 December 2015)

PARIS — United Nations appeals judges on Tuesday ordered a new trial for two top aides of former President Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia, saying that they had been wrongfully acquitted in 2013. The appeals panel said that the judges in the original case had made legal errors and misinterpreted international law. The panel barred the two men from returning to Serbia and ordered them to be detained at the court’s prison in The Hague. It was a rare moment in the two-decades-old criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. The court, created by the United Nations Security Council, has seen many defendants convicted and others acquitted and several have died or took their lives in prison. But it has only once before had to retry a case. The two former Milosevic aides, Jovica Stanisic, the former chief of the Serbian secret police, and Franko Simatovic, his deputy, who opted to travel to The Hague for the hearing, had entered the courtroom on Tuesday looking confident. But they seemed taken aback by the verdict, lowering their heads as the decision was read out. During the 1991-95 war that broke up Yugoslavia, the two men were among the country’s most powerful figures, and prosecutors had called them pivotal players in Mr. Milosevic’s strategy of seizing lands for Serbs and violently driving non-Serbs from large stretches of neighboring Bosnia and Croatia. Their three-year trial in The Hague laid bare much of the inner workings of the Milosevic era, during which the government often trusted the secret police more than the military. The two men ran covert operations, including training and deploying paramilitary combat units that terrorized and killed civilians as they moved from village to village, often ahead of the military, looting and burning homes and mosques and forcing tens of thousands of people to flee. The judges in the original trial acknowledged that many murders and other crimes resulted from that campaign. But the judges acquitted both police commanders, saying there was not enough evidence that they had issued “specific directions” to commit crimes, or that they were part of a “joint criminal enterprise,” the tribunal’s term for criminal conspiracy. The unexpected acquittal drew intense criticism from legal experts and from survivors of the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. A majority of the judges on the appeals panel, led by the presiding judge, Fausto Pocar of Italy, said they had found errors in law on crucial points. For example, they said that to find someone liable for aiding and abetting crimes, international law did not require proof of “specific directions” to commit crimes. Judge Pocar said that the earlier finding was in “direct conflict” with prevailing jurisprudence. He said the panel could not send the case back to the original chamber because two of the judges were no longer there. The chief prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, said that he was “satisfied with the outcome, because we had asked for a conviction or a retrial.” He said that the question of “specific direction” was fundamental. He and others have said that maintaining that element could make it nearly impossible to establish liability in the case of large-scale crimes where those responsible are leaders or commanders who often do not issue written orders and are likely to be far from the scene.