The Belgrade Appellate Court in a third-instance procedure issued a verdict condemning the sentences for members of Simo Chetniks, Tomislav Gavric, Zoran Djurdjevic and Zoran Alic, for committing inhumane crime, rape and sexual abuse of three Roma women in the village of Skocic in the second half of 1992 year. The HLC considers that the over-spread court policy of the courts in Serbia brings to punishment and non-repetition of the crimes, fairness, or to sympathy and solidarity for the pain of victims of war crimes.
In the second instance proceedings, the Belgrade Appeal Court in July 2018 upheld the acquittal against members of the Sima Chetniks units for the demolition of mosques and the killing of 27 Roma civilians in the village of Skocic in July 1992.
By deciding upon the submitted appeals, the third degree commission found that the second instance commission did not assess the mitigating circumstances during the determination of the amount of the sentence inadequately. For those reasons, Gavric and Djurdjevic were sentenced to eight years in prison and Alic sentenced to five years in prison.
Also, this crime in Skocic is the only crime that has been prosecuted before the domestic courts for crimes committed against Roma, and that for the murder of the Roma in Skočić, a member of the "Chetniks of Sima" is not convicted because the Appeal has tightened the standards of proof the accomplices, and for several months of sexual violence and rape of the Romani women, pronounced mild sentences in respect of the penalties given for committed crimes against other nationalities, the impression is that the competent institutions for processing war crimes in Serbia are uninterested in investigating and processing those crimes committed against Roma after the conflict in the former Yugoslavia, where, in spite of lack of sympathy with victims, the institutions in Serbia show a discriminatory attitude towards the Roma.
http://www.hlc-rdc.org/?p=36418&fbclid=IwAR2ApWND2UunKqpLYqpKaK3tGG7iJyupBh7jTHce8Wk1JSRep6G1F2qzJj8
