Ivanovic: Protected Witness’ Allegations while in Detention

Zeljko Ivanovic, also known as Arkan, is charged with having participated in the capture of a large group of men and taking away and shooting more than 1,000 men in the Kravica Agricultural Cooperative premises on July 13, 1995.

“I asked him if he knew Arkan. He told me: ‘I know him very well. If you see him, tell him I never mentioned his name in many of my statements. He was not present there at all when all those things happened,” witness Slobodan Radonja said.

He said that he spoke to the protected witness, whose identity and testimony must not be published as per a Court’s decision, in the Kula Penal and Correctional Facility, after having been detained in August 2008 for illicit production and trade of drugs.

Radonja said that he had known the indictee for six or seven years, adding he met him while he worked on a construction site in Mokro, near Pale.

“He was not hiding. He used to go out and visit coffee shops. He told me that police had looked for him in his house in Skelani because of some war crime,” the witness said.

The indictment alleges that Ivanovic was a member of the Skelani Third Unit with the Second Special Police Squad of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Republika Srpska, MUP RS.

The Defence announced that it did not have any more witnesses. The trial is due to continue on Thursday, December 30.M.T.