Mihailovic was sentenced to death for war crimes his Chetnik troops committed during the Second World War. He was executed in Belgrade in 1946.
According to a press release issued by the SPO, which is led by Serbia-Montenegro Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic, the medal was given to Mihailovic for "saving 500 US airmen in 1944" and for his "great contribution to the victory of the Allies".
Draskovic's party claims that during WWII there were two anti-Fascist movements in Serbia, one being the Partisan movement led by Josip Broz Tito, and the other the Chetniks led by Mihailovic.
The head of the Civil Committee for Human Rights, Zoran Pusic, sent an open letter to US Ambassador to Croatia Ralph Frank last Friday protesting against the announced presentation of Truman's decoration of Mihailovic.
Pusic also says that Chetniks can in no way be considered fighters against fascism because they helped US airmen in the last year of World WarII, "when it was rather clear in whose favour the fortune of war had turned and when other collaborators of fascists and Nazis, and even fascists and Nazis themselves, sought to establish contact with the Allies".
Pusic also recalls the mass crimes committed by Chetnik units against Muslims and Croats, which he says "did not happen as individual incidents but were part of a planned campaign aimed at the worst form of ethnic cleansing and extermination of entire communities". Pusic cites documents supporting his claims.
"President Truman and the US government were very likely not familiar with those documents in 1947, when many Chetnik emigrants in the USA depicted Draza Mihailovic as a victim of the communist regime. Nevertheless, those documents are available today and I would be grateful if you could make the US State Department aware of their existence," Pusic said.