The Appeal Court in Belgrade abolished the lower instance’s decision to rehabilitate a Chetniks’ leader, Nikola Kalabic, due to a procedural fault, the court’s statement said on Friday.

The Higher Court in Serbian western town of Valjevo ruled last May to rehabilitate Nikola Kalabic, the commander of the Serbian Royal Mountain Guard Corps during World War II, and the closest ally of General Draza Mihailovic, the supreme Chetniks’ commander.

But the Appeal Court found there were some procedural mistakes and ordered Valjevo’s Court to correct them, mainly to establish whether Kalabic was declared a war criminal and collaborator with German occupiers, as well as the way he died.

A law in Serbia stipulates that no war criminal can be rehabilitated.

After the WW II, Yugoslav security service captured Kalabic who then allegedly agreed to cooperate in a hunt for Mihajlovic in exchange for the immunity.

His family denied the deal was made. Kalabic was reportedly killed by the partisans, but the circumstances surrounding his death also remained dubious.

Kalabic’s boss Mihailovic was rehabilitated in 2015. The ruling said he did not have a fair trial after the war, that the charges were ideologically based, that he had no right to defense, and that he met his attorney just before the trial opened.

Chetniks were the elite unit of the former Yugoslav Royal Army who stayed in the country as the army in motherland after their command capitulated in 1941.

Mihailovic and his fighters started as an anti-fascist guerrilla, but later switched sides and lost support from Western allies which then turned to the communist and partisans’ leader, Josip Broz Tito.  

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