Commenting on the verdict against former top Serbian security officials, Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, BiH House of Peoples MP from the ruling party in Bosnia’s Serb-majority Republika Srpska (RS) entity, Dusanka Majkic, said that international courts are handing down “draconian” sentences whenever Serbs are put on trial and that this continues to produce disagreements in BiH.
The International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (IRMCT) in The Hague ruled that the former head of Serbia’s State Security Service (SDB), Stanisic, and former head of the country’s Special Operations Unit (JSO), Simatovic, are guilty of aiding and abetting the war crimes committed in Bosnia and Croatia between 1992 and 1995. They were sentenced to 12 years in prison each.
Majkic is a member of the Alliance of Independent Social Democrats (SNSD), the party led by the Chairman and Serb member of Bosnia’s tripartite Presidency, Milorad Dodik.
“When it comes to Serbs – those are draconian punishments,” she said.
“On the one side, there are war criminals who killed children walking around cities, on the other side, people are convicted over things that have not been proven,” she said.
She argued that Serbs have been the victims of injustice and that it is unacceptable that members of one ethnic group have received long prison sentences while the trials against members of certain other ethnic groups have not even started.