The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) will on Wednesday announce its ruling in a case against former Serbian intelligence officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, charged with crimes against ethnic Croats and Bosniaks committed during the 1991-95 war.

The prosecution has requested life imprisonment for them, and the defence their acquittal.

Stanisic (71), former head of the Serbian State Security Service (SDB), and Simatovic (71), SDB’s chief operative, were charged with the persecution, killing, forcible relocation, and deportation of ethnic Croats and Bosniaks, committed in the period from 1991 to 1995 in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina by Serb paramilitaries.

They were charged with taking part in a joint criminal enterprise, led by the then Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, the purpose of which was to  establish a Serb-dominated territory through the expulsion of non-Serbs from large areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Stanisic and Simatovic were arrested by Serbian authorities after the assassination of Serbia’s Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic in March 2003. Their first trial, held before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), lasted from June 2009 to the end of January 2013 and ended in an acquittal for both men.

The ICTY Appeals Chamber in December 2015 accepted an appeal by the prosecution and quashed the trial court verdict over several mistakes, ordering a retrial, which started in July 2017 before the IRMCT, successor to the ICTY.

The retrial of Stanisic and Simatovic is the last trial before the Hague-based court that determines whether Serbian state officials were responsible for war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As Milosevic had died before his trial was concluded, no Serbian state official has been found guilty of those crimes so far, and only military commanders have been convicted. The case will not end with today’s ruling because both the prosecution and the defence have the right to appeal.

Once that verdict becomes final, all the cases previously launched by the ICTY and completed by the IRMCT will be finished.