Karadzic: Unknown Force Protected Jelisic

 Witness Djordje Ristanic said that, as member of the wartime Presidency of Brcko municipality in May 1992, he was not able to influence the work of police, but he could suggest certain things.

 “The police station was emptied when the conflict began. All Muslim and Croat members left, taking the assets with them. What left was the building, desks, chairs and about ten police members. All others were reserve policemen,” the witness said.
 
The witness told the Court that “some sort of supervisors, controllers” were present in police forces at the time, adding that they could not expel them from police, although they caused them much “trouble”.
 
“They arrested and slapped the police chief twice. I was arrested together with the Chief of the Brigade Headquarters… Those men did not go to the front lines. They conducted operations in the town and plundered it,” Ristanic said, speaking about “paramilitary formations, as the strongest force in Brcko at that time”.    
 
Karadzic, former President of Republika Srpska, is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and violation of the laws and customs of war in Bosnia and Herzegovina .
 
According to the charges, Karadzic participated in a joint criminal enterprise with the aim of persecuting the non-Serb population in 20 Bosnian municipalities. The indictment alleges that many men were killed in the Luka detention camp in Brcko from May 8 to June 6, 1992.
 
Ristanovic said that he was arrested in late July or at the beginning of August 1992, after the unit commanded by Milorad Davidovic of the Federal Police of the then Yugoslavia, had arrested a certain number of paramilitary formations members.
 
When asked by Karadzic if he knew that he asked Belgrade to help him get rid of paramilitary formations, Ristanic said that he knew about an intervention concerning that matter.
 
“We used to call all those problematic guys ‘red berets’. The name was obviously a synonym for an elite unit, although we formally did not have ‘red berets’ in Brcko,” the witness said.
 
As far as “the problematic guys” are concerned, the witness mentioned Goran Jelisic, who was sentenced by The Hague Tribunal to 40 years in prison for committing 12 murders in the Luka detention camp and at other locations in Brcko and causing bodily injuries to and stealing money from detainees.
 
“I know that everyone avoided having contacts with him. They could have opposed him maybe, but the question was who protected him. This was a secret,” said Ristanic, adding that Jelisic had left Brcko a long time before Davidovic arrived, because he probably had to go out of the way of “the more powerful ones”.
 
Ristanic, who said, at the beginning of his testimony on Friday, July 15, that he did not know about the establishment of the Luka prison, said that, “despite persistently insisting on it”, he was not able to determine “who ruled the detention camp”.    
 
Towards the end of the hearing, expert witness Reynaud Theunens, who made a report on Karadzic and the RS military forces, began his testimony.
 
The trial is due to continue on July 19.

M.T.