A UN tribunal widened the war crimes convictions of two former Serbian spy chiefs and lengthened their prison sentences Wednesday in the last major Hague trial from the 1990s Bosnian conflict.
Judges rejected appeals by the late Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic's state security boss Jovica Stanisic and his deputy Franko Simatovic against their 2021 convictions, and raised their jail terms from 12 to 15 years.
The court found that Stanisic, 72, and Simatovic, 73, had been part of a criminal plan led by Milosevic to "ethnically cleanse" non-Serbs from large parts of Bosnia and Croatia -- reversing their earlier acquittal on that charge.
Prosecutors said the "really important" verdict was the first to formally link atrocities in Bosnia to the regime of Serbia's Milosevic, who died in custody in The Hague in 2006.
"It's the only decision we have with the direct involvement of officials from Belgrade convicted as part of a joint criminal enterprise," chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz told reporters.
Munira Subasic, president of one of the "Mothers of Srebrenica" associations that campaigns for justice for victims of the 1995 massacre, said the verdict could help ease the tensions that still plague the Balkans.
"Without truth, there is no justice. Without justice, there is no trust. And without trust, there is no reconciliation," Subasic said outside the court.
- 'Criminal purpose' -
Only Stanisic was in court for the verdict, wearing a blue jacket and occasionally wringing his hands. Simatovic watched by videolink from his cell.
The septuagenarian security chiefs have been at the centre of a marathon court process since their arrests in 2003, having been acquitted by the tribunal in 2013 and then retried.
This time, appeals judges upheld the pair's convictions for the war crime of murder and the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, forcible transfer and deportation.
But where the verdict two years ago was limited to a Serb campaign of terror against the Bosnian town of Bosanski Samac in April 1992, judges on Wednesday signficantly widened the convictions.
This time, Stanisic and Simatovic were found guilty of being part of a broader conspiracy to commit wider crimes across the Balkans.
"Stanisic and Simatovic shared the intent to further the common criminal purpose to forcibly and permanently remove the majority of non-Serbs from large areas of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina," head judge Graciela Gatti Santana said.
The court dismissed the pair's appeals "in their entirety... and imposes a sentence of 15 years", she added. Stanisic has already served seven years and Simatovic just over eight years.
- 'Ethnic cleansing' -
The tribunal has previously handed down life sentences to suspects including Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic and military chief Ratko Mladic, but it has been harder to link crimes to Serbia itself.
Prosecutor Brammertz said Wednesday's verdict showed that "political leadership from neighbour countries, here in particular from Belgrade, were involved in the planning of those large ethnic cleansing campaigns."
Amnesty International said the convictions were a "historic moment for international justice".
"It leaves no doubt about the involvement of Serbia's police and security services in the wartime atrocities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is something that Serbia's authorities continue to deny to this day," Amnesty Europe researcher Jelena Sesar said in a statement.
The case is meanwhile the last left over from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), which was set up to prosecute crimes from the wars that tore apart Yugoslavia after the fall of communism.
The ICTY closed in 2017 and its cases, along with those from the Rwanda genocide tribunal, have since been dealt with by the International Residual Mechanism for Criminal Tribunals (MICT) in The Hague.
"This pronouncement marks a milestone," judge Gatti Santana said.
The Balkans wars left about 130,000 people dead and millions displaced amid some of the worst atrocities seen in Europe since World War II.