"The ICTY found in the Martic case that Belgrade was involved in the joint criminal enterprise in both Croatia and Bosnia, which included not only Milosevic but JNA commander Veljko Kadijevic and Blagoje Adzic as well," the attorney, who had defended Croatian General Ante Gotovina at the Hague tribunal, told Hina.
He said the Martic verdict established that the political goal of annexing Serbian territories in Croatia and Bosnia to Serbia was carried out with widespread and systematic armed attacks on territories in which the majority population was Croatian or non-Serb as well as through violence and intimidation.
In that verdict, the chamber found that the Serbian Army of the Krajina and the Yugoslav Army were one and the same organisation, only at two different locations, and that throughout the war the rebel Serb leaders in Croatia and Bosnia collaborated with the leadership in Serbia.
Asked if today's acquittal of former Yugoslav Army Chief-Of-Staff Momcilo Perisic exonerated the leadership in Belgrade, Misetic said it did not necessarily mean the "acquittal" of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and his associates.
"Just because it was established that Perisic didn't have criminal intent when he sent weapons to the Bosnian Serbs, it doesn't mean that Milosevic, (Jovica) Stanisic, Kadijevic and the others didn't share the intent to create a Greater Serbia through crime," he said, adding that the ICTY simply said that Perisic was not liable for the acts of Bosnian and Croatian Serbs by having sent them weapons.
"This isn't a controversial issue for me. Would anyone really say that every country that sends weapons to the rebels in Syria should be prosecuted if Syrian rebels commit crimes with those weapons," wondered Misetic.
He said the situation was different with Milosevic, Stanisic and Vojislav Seselj, as the tribunal could find criminal intent in their statements and acts which showed that they supported a policy aimed at removing non-Serbs from occupied territories.
In April 1997, the County Court in Zadar sentenced Perisic in his absence to 20 years' imprisonment for crimes against humanity and international law, namely for war crimes against civilians committed in September and October 1991. The court also convicted 18 officers of the then Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) for the same crimes, sentencing them to prison terms ranging from ten to 20 years.