ABSTRACT
The chapter examines the process of judicial rehabilitation of Chetnik commander Dragoljub Mihailović that ended with a positive court decision in 2015. The significance of this case is that it represents the formal epilogue and a legal confirmation of the decades-long process of positive reinterpretation of the Chetnik movement, intertwined with the narratives of their victimhood, that has been promoted at multiple levels of memory work in Serbia. While the court case and its outcome revolved around the hegemonic discourses about the Second World War and state socialism, it was the agency from below that initiated the process, namely the plaintiffs from the anti-communist memory community. The apparent personal background and motivation for judicial rehabilitation is not only intertwined with the political, but the political dimension prevails. The chapter addresses numerous issues of the rehabilitation process, including the problem of selective interpretation of history and the participation of historians as expert witnesses.
