Stanisic and Simatovic entered their pleas via video link from Belgrade after Judge O-Gon Kwon read the three counts of the amended indictment. Present in the courtroom was also the chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, Carla del Ponte.
Stanisic and Simatovic are charged on the basis of individual and command responsibility with persecution on political, racial and religious grounds as crimes against humanity and with murder as a violation of the laws and customs of war. The prosecution charges them with the execution of six men from Srebrenica, committed on 16 July 1995 near Trnovo by members of "The Scorpions" who video-recorded their crime.
The prosecution kept in the initial indictment charges of deportation and cruel treatment, committed against non-Serb civilians in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1991-95, to which the two did not enter a plea today.
SDB chief Jovica Stanisic and his assistant and commander of the SDB's "Red Berets" unit for special purposes, Franko Simatovic, are the two key operatives in the Serbian leadership's joint criminal enterprise in the 1990s, charged with directly controlling "The Scorpions" who were an SDB unit and not a paramilitary unit as claimed by the authorities in Belgrade after the discovery of the video-recording showing the execution.
Stanisic and Simatovic were released pending trial in 2004 and have been in Belgrade since. Stanisic's attorney Gert-Jan Knoops last months requested discontinuation of the proceedings against his client due to his ill health.
Stanisic and Simatovic were arrested in the police operation "Sabre" in March 2003 after the assassination of Serbian prime minister Zoran Djindjic.