The Court of Appeals in Belgrade said in a statement on Wednesday that it has upheld the first-instance acquittal of wartime Bosnian Serb Army Drina Corps commander Milenko Zivanovic for crimes related to Srebrenica.
On November 24, 1992, Zivanovic issued an order that stated: “Launch an attack using the main body of troops and major equipment to inflict on the enemy the highest possible losses, exhaust them, break them up, or force them to surrender and force the Muslim local population to abandon the area of Cerska, Zepa, Srebrenica, and Gorazde.”
The Court of Appeals said that during the trial, the Public Prosecutor’s Office “did not submit to the court any evidence on the basis of which it could be established that in the period from the beginning of the war in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1992 to July 11, 1995, there was a forcible relocation of the Muslim civilian population from the area of Srebrenica”.
It also said that the Public Prosecutor’s Office did not provide evidence to prove that Zivanovic “undertook any actions in that period by which he participated in the forced displacement of the civilian population of Srebrenica”.
The Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre NGO, which monitors war crime trials, described the first-instance acquittal of Zivanovic in July 2025 as “a dangerous judicial precedent”.
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