Jovica Stanišić

Jovan "Jovica" Stanišić (; born 30 July 1950) is a Serbian former intelligence officer who served as the head of the State Security Directorate (RDB) within the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia from 1992 until 1998. He was removed from the position in October 1998, months after the outbreak of Kosovo War.

Although very little was known about him during the 1990s, he is widely seen as the "mastermind and conductor of controlled chaos" during the large part of Yugoslav Wars. The retrial before the UN Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals (MICT) has commenced on 13 June 2017. The base of Stanišić and Simatović's operations was revealed to be in western Bosnia, where they commanded regional forces. On 30 June 2021, he was found guilty under counts of murder, deportation, forcible transfer and persecution as crimes against humanity that occurred during the Bosanski Šamac ethnic cleansing, and sentenced to 12 years in prison. On appeal, his sentence was increased to 15 years in 2023.

Early years and education Stanišić was born on 30 July 1950 in the village of Ratkovo, Odžaci, SR Serbia, FPR Yugoslavia.

His parents were of Montenegrin descent, from Bjelopavlići. They have lived after the World War I in Kosovo, and migrated to Bačka where Stanišić was born following the World War II.

Between the mid-1960s and the breakup of Yugoslavia in 1990s, UDBA/SDB assassinated more than hundred Yugoslav political emigrants (i.e. Yugoslav dissidents) around the world, mostly in Western Europe and the United States. Many of these assassinations were performed by criminals who in exchange for leniency about other crimes, did the "dirty work" for the country.

From 1998 to 2000, in a series of mafia wars during the last years of Milošević’s rule, most of the prominent members of the Serbian underground, some of whom took part in the paramilitary units, and security officers were murdered under mysterious circumstances.

According to the prosecution, Stanišić as key intelligence officer oversaw the Serbian special paramilitary units, including the Serb Volunteer Guard (Arkan's Tigers), Special Operations Unit (Red Berets) and Scorpions, which were secretly established by or with the assistance of the State Security Directorate from no later than April 1991 and continued until 1995. These secret units composed of commandos and criminals who plundered their way across Croatia and Bosnia, committing many war crimes. The prosecution claims that Stanišić, in his capacity as a key intelligence officer, oversaw these secret units. The prosecution accused him of "attempting to create a Greater Serbia using the areas containing the Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats". One of the prosecution's crucial arguments and evidence that he and Simatović were directly responsible for the creation of the paramilitary units was a 1997 film taken in Special Operations Unit's headquarters where senior political and intelligence officials including Milošević himself visited the unit, misrepresenting the history of the unit and its war record.

In 2009, the trial was officially opened six years after Stanišić's first court appearance. However, his acquittal as well as that of Franko Simatović had been overturned on 15 December 2015 by a United Nations' ICTY Appeals Chamber which vacated the initial verdict deemed faulty as it was based on an insistence that the men could only be guilty if they "specifically directed" the crimes. On 22 December 2015, Simatović and Stanišić were granted temporary release. Back in Serbia, the two had to report to a local police station in Belgrade every day and surrender their passports to the Ministry of Justice of Serbia. He and Simatović were on provisional release from December 2015 to June 2017. After the MICT's retrial opening statements, Stanišić filed a request to follow the trial from home due to illness, which was granted and he has been on a provisional release since July 2017. However, the prosecution has not objected to motions regarding his provisional releases, which have been met with strict conditions.

On 30 June 2021, he and Simatović were found guilty under counts of murder, deportation, forcible transfer and persecution as crimes against humanity that occurred in Bosanski Šamac in April 1992, and sentenced to 12 years in prison, making it the only Tribunal's conviction of an official from Serbia for crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina. He was found guilty of other crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina (Bijeljina, Zvornik, Doboj, Sanski Most, Trnovo) and Croatia (Daljska Planina), and included in a joint criminal enterprise. The Tribunal concluded:

Controversy The United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) submitted a sealed document to the court attesting to his role as an undercover operative helping to bring peace to the region.

Personal life During his professional career, he had several nicknames: Korčagin (Korchagin), Tuhačev (Tukhachev) and Ledeni (lit. Iceman). He was nicknamed Ledeni for the preternaturally cool demeanor and calmness he possessed while dealing with even the most complicated situations at work and in life.