Trial delayed of Serb secret service officers

THE HAGUE (Reuters) - The war crimes trial of two former Serbian intelligence chiefs accused of the murder, persecution and deportation of non-Serbs was delayed again on Monday as one of the accused failed to show up.

Jovica Stanisic, the head of the secret service of late Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, and Franko Simatovic, a commander of elite Serb forces, are accused of arming and training militias which committed atrocities in Croatia and Bosnia during the Balkan wars.

They are charged with being members of a "joint criminal enterprise" alongside Milosevic and others aimed at driving non-Serbs from swathes of Croatia and Bosnia during the wars that tore apart the former Yugoslavia from 1991 to 1995.

The two accused, both aged 57, have pleaded not guilty.

Their trial, which was delayed at the prosecution's request last week, is hoped to shed more light on Serbia's involvement in the fighting in Bosnia and Croatia. Milosevic died of a heart attack in 2006 before a verdict in his marathon trial.

Stanisic, who has suffered health problems in recent years, was not in the courtroom on Monday and proceedings were adjourned after a closed session without judges giving a reason.

The two men are charged with directing some of the most notorious militias of the Balkan wars including the Scorpions, the Red Berets and Arkan's Tigers, and the indictment lists hundreds of execution-style murders.

In one incident, the Scorpions videotaped the murder of six prisoners taken after the fall of the Srebrenica enclave in Bosnia, footage first shown at Milosevic's trial.

Stanisic and Simatovic were arrested by Serb police in 2003 for suspected links with organised crime in a sweep following the assassination of reformist prime minister Zoran Djindjic, who had infuriated ultranationalists by sending Milosevic to The Hague.