How to Save a General

General Mladić: There you go, Živanović, you've got your chance...

Živanović: Oh man! My blood pressure must be 600/300.

You’ve got your chance, commander...1

In mid-December 2021, the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina indicted Milenko Živanović, former commander of the Drina Corps of the Army of Republika Srpska. That same month, at the request of that prosecutor's office and with the assistance of the Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor's Office, Živanović was questioned in Serbia for the second time.

In spite of that, two weeks later, the War Crimes Prosecutor's Office of the Republic of Serbia filed its own indictment against Živanović. Although the prosecutor's offices applied different legal qualifications for the crime, and the Serbian office partially narrowed the indictment regarding the charges brought against him, both institutions charged Živanović with crimes committed in Srebrenica.2

The indictment against General Milenko Živanović is one of only five indictments filed by the War Crimes Prosecutor's Office in Serbia for crimes committed in Srebrenica or in connection with Srebrenica, in more than twenty years since it was founded. It is also the first indictment against a high-ranking officer. The second to explicitly mention Srebrenica. The third that followed after the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina had already charged the same person for the same events.

It was also the only one that resulted in an acquittal.

Milenko Živanović was acquitted on July 1, 2025, before the Higher Court in Belgrade on all counts of the indictment that charged him with ordering the forcible displacement of civilian population from the zone of responsibility of the Drina Corps, as well as with participating, through his orders and actions, in the forcible displacement of civilians from the protected zone of Srebrenica.

The general's defense team included his chosen lawyer, the public prosecutor, and the judicial panel.

For its part, the prosecutor's office made an effort to sift through the general's orders and base four counts of the indictment on just six orders and decisions. During the proceedings, the prosecutor's office endeavored to prove that Živanović had signed each of them and that these orders constitute criminal offenses in and of themselves, regardless of whether they were carried out. Unlike the Bosnian-Herzegovinian prosecutor's office, which emphasized the consequences of the Drina Corps command's orders over a longer period, the prosecutor's office in Serbia focused on signatures and stamps, failing to prove the actions by which those orders were executed, as well as that the general had effective control over the corps at the time of the events he is charged with.

The prosecutor's office examined one witness during the proceedings.

One gets the impression that the prosecutor's office itself did not have much confidence in its own indictment, given that it only asked the Court for a five-year prison sentence.

On the other hand, the Court fully accepted the defense’s evidence and claims, including testimonies from persons convicted of crimes in Srebrenica. The presiding judge spent a full two hours explaining the reasons why the panel dismissed the first two counts of the indictment, while the public was left without an explanation for the remaining two. There was no time—Veljko Belivuk was already waiting for his turn in courtroom 1 of the Higher Court in Belgrade.

The panel accepted witness statements and defense documentation according to which Milenko Živanović was not commanding the Drina Corps during the Srebrenica operation. In his defense, Živanović claimed that he had not had command of the corps since June 15, and that the official handover of duties between him and Radislav Krstić didn’t take place until July 13, 1995. The prosecutor's office, on the other hand, attempted to prove his command exclusively through signatures on orders, without examining the situation on the ground. Thus, the prosecutor failed to ask General Živanović in what capacity he had walked through Srebrenica, smiling, on July 11, shoulder to shoulder with Ratko Mladić.

The attack on Srebrenica began around three o'clock in the morning on July 6, 1995. The order for active combat operations was issued by the Drina Corps command on July 2, 1992. It was precisely this order, with Živanović's signature, that the Hague Tribunal in its judgments identified as the initial step in the Srebrenica genocide. However, before the Court in Belgrade, that order became an argument for the defense, and the Court accepted that the task of the Drina Corps units was to retake the positions held in 1993, without entering Srebrenica. Although this is formally correct, it had already been established in the judgment against Radislav Krstić, Živanović's successor at the head of the Drina Corps that the further military elaboration of the order from July 2 led to pushing the Bosniak population into a humanitarian crisis, and then to the elimination of the Srebrenica and Žepa enclaves.

In the only case against a high-ranking officer for crimes in Srebrenica, neither the prosecutor's office nor the Court seriously dealt with the consequences of the orders that the accused issued from November 1992 to July 13, 1995, as commander of the Drina Corps.

The prosecutor's office filed the indictment reluctantly, in order to avoid having to prosecute under an indictment that might be transferred to it by the Prosecutor's Office of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It had already provided this type of "protection" to Brano Gojković, a member of the Tenth Sabotage Detachment, and Miomir Jasiković, commander of the military police company of the Zvornik Brigade of the Army of the Republika Srpska, by signing plea agreements immediately after indictments were filed against them in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

The Court, unlike the prosecutor's office, delivered the first-instance judgment willingly, with full confidence in the version of events presented by the defense.

The general is free.

It has been thirty years since the genocide.

Originally published on Peščanik.net on July 3, 2025.