Citation: IT-95-11
Link to the full case: http://www.icty.org/case/martic/4
Trial Judgment: 12 June 2007
Appeal Judgment: 8 October 2008
Milan Martić held positions including those of President, Minister of Defence, and Minister of Internal Affairs in the SAO Krajina and RSK. He was tried for allegedly having participated in the creation, financing, supply, training and direction of Martić’s Police. He was also tried for having commanded, controlled, directed and otherwise exercised effective control over these special police forces; participated in the creation, financing, supply, training and direction of special police forces of the Serbian State Security Service; participated in military actions and subsequent crimes of these police and military forces throughout the targeted territories; and participated in the planning, preparation and execution of the take-over of territories in the Croatian SAOs and parts of BiH.
Further, he was also charged for having planned, instigated, ordered, committed, or otherwise aided and abetted the planning, preparation, or execution of the persecutions, exterminations, murders, imprisonment, torture, inhumane acts, and cruel treatment of the Croat, Muslim and other non-Serb civilian populations in Serb Krajina and Zagreb; openly espoused and encouraged the creation of a homogenous Serbian State encompassing the territories SAO Krajina and actively participated with his troops to achieve this end; and planned and ordered the shelling attacks on Zagreb in May 1995.
Martić was charged on the basis of individual and superior criminal responsibility and participation in a joint criminal enterprise for crimes against humanity for persecutions, extermination, murder, imprisonment, torture, inhumane acts including forcible transfers, and deportations; and for violations of the laws or customs of war for murder, torture, cruel treatment, wanton destruction of villages or devastation not justified by military necessity, destruction or willful damage to institutions dedicated to education or religion, plunder of private or public property, and attacks on civilians.
In 2007, the Trial Chamber acquitted Martić of extermination, but found him individually criminally responsible for all other charges, and found that the crimes perpetuated by Martić against the non-Serb population were part of a joint criminal enterprise with a common purpose to forcibly remove the majority of the non-Serb population from parts of Croatia and BiH in order to create a new Serb-dominated State. He was sentenced to 35 years’ imprisonment. In 2008, the Appeals Chamber dismissed upheld the sentence and punishment.
Summary based on notes from the IJRC.