Republika Srpska Top Political Leaders Did Not Advocate for Persecution
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The top political leaders of Republika Srpska did not opt for moving non-Serbs out, said Kupresanin, former President of the Krajina Autonomous Region. However, he allowed the possibility that people were moved out from municipalities, which, as he suggested, were not under the control of the central authorities.
Speaking about Serbian crisis committees in municipalities, Kupresanin said that they were formed due to tensions on the eve of the breakout of the war, not for the sake of deporting the non-Serb population. According to the witness testimony, neither the committees nor municipal leaders received instructions from Karadzic, because they neither respected him nor the SDS.
Karadzic, former President of Republika Srpska and SDS, is charged with the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, which reached the scale of genocide in seven municipalities. Besides that, he is on trial for genocide in Srebrenica, terror against citizens in Sarajevo and taking UNPROFOR members hostage.
The witness said that the relations between Karadzic and Republika Srpska Army Commander Ratko Mladic, who too is on trial at The Hague, were tense, adding that Mladic put himself above the supreme Command and Parliament.
Karadzic had a state, but he had no authority, while the VRS had the authority, but not the state, Kupresanin said.
He said that, in the summer of 1992 he visited Omarska detention camp on behalf of Karadzic and requested its dismissal, adding that he requested the improvement of conditions in Manjaca detention camp. Responding to a prosecutors question, Kupresanin confirmed that mass crimes were committed against Bosniaks in Bosanska Krajina, but he had not known about them for a long time. He suggested that civilians did not commit crimes, but armies and paramilitaries did.
He told the Tribunal that many people did not even want to hear about crimes and that, in many situations, the Government did not want to react. Speaking about the murder of 68 people in Brisevo village, near Prijedor, in July 1992, Kupresanin said that it was known exactly who committed the crime and that the perpetrators could have been arrested in an hour, but they were not processed.
When Prosecutor Alan Tieger presented him with speeches given at the beginning of the Bosnian war, in which he expressed a concern due to the number of Bosniaks jeopardising the living space, Kupresanin confirmed that he thought that they represented an armed threat.
Responding to a suggestion by The Hague Prosecution that he advocated for the occupation of territories where Serbs were the minority, the witness said: I thought that we were the remains of the people slaughtered during the Second World War and that we must not let that happen again What happened to us during that war was the same thing that happened to Jews in Germany… Had there not been the SDS, there would have been no Serbs.
Kupresanin pointed out that he still believed that Bosnia belonged to Serbs and that it cannot have three leaders. Orthodox Serbs, Catholic Serbs and Mohammedan Serbs live in Bosnia, so all of them are Serbs…Everything else is just a communistic fake I have always said that Muslims are Serbs, Kupresanin said.
When asked about Radoslav Brdjanin, President of the Crisis Committee of the Krajina Autonomous Region, Kupresanin said that, practically, Brdjanin did nothing to the detriment to the other peoples but he did make occasional verbal outbreaks.
Denying a previous allegation that Brdjanin announced that only a thousand of Muslims will stay in Banja Luka, the witness said that he heard Brdjanin determining the percentage of the Muslim population in the town.
Also, he confirmed having heard of Brdjanins message to Bosniaks not to make winter stores, because they will not have a chance to use them. Kupresanin allowed the possibility that somebody maybe had problems because of that.
The Tribunal sentenced Brdjanin to 33 years in prison for having persecuted Bosniaks and Croats from Bosanska Krajina. Brdjanin will testify in defence of Karadzic next week.
The trial is due to continue on Friday, November 15.
