Criminals, who Disgraced Honest Soldiers

As Ratko Mladic’s trial continues before The Hague Tribunal, Defence witness Veselinko Simovic says that he would put some of the Serbs, who were sentenced for crimes in Foca, “on an electric chair”.

The witness, former member of the Territorial Defence in Foca, said that no crimes against Muslims were committed in Foca.  
 
During his testimony Simovic said that “the dogs of war” and “criminals” from Serbia and Montenegro “disgraced all honest soldiers from Foca” by pillaging and burning houses and mistreating Muslims and Serbs.  

However, when asked by the Prosecutor if he knew that Dragoljub Kunarac and Radovan Stankovic, members of the unit to which he belonged, were sentenced, after the war, to long imprisonment sentences for having committed war crimes, including the rape of Muslim women, Simovic answered affirmatively, adding that he did not know about those crimes at the time of their commission.  

In 2002 The Hague Tribunal rendered a second instance verdict against Dragoljub Kunarac, who was arrested in 1998, sentencing him to 28 years in prison for having subjected Muslim women in Foca to servitude and raped them.  

The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, BiH, sentenced Radovan Stankovic to 20 years in prison for sexual violence in Foca.

When asked whether Radomir Kovac too was sentenced for those same crimes, the witness became emotional and said that, “by having done that”, Kovac “disgraced me as a soldier”.

He pointed out that, when he came back from serving his sentence, he told Kovac:

“You got out of it. Had I been there, I would have taken you to an electric chair and pressed the button, not once, but three times…The Court sentenced you, but the sentence was not long enough… Had I known about those crimes, I swear to God and this Court, I would have killed him even if I would be sentenced to life imprisonment for that,” Simovic said several times.  

In 2001 the Tribunal sentenced Kovac to 20 years in prison for having subjected Muslim women in Foca to servitude and raped them. As per a decision by the Tribunal, he was recently released from prison in Norway after having served two-thirds of his sentence.

Mladic, former Commander of the Republika Srpska Army, is charged with the persecution of Muslims and Croats throughout BiH, including sexual violence against women in Foca. Foca is one the seven municipalities in which, according to the charges, the persecution of non-Serbs reached the scale of genocide.

When the Prosecutor suggested that not only paramilitary soldiers, but also VRS members, committed crimes, the witness said: “Yes”. He said that the perpetrators were soulless persons, who disgraced VRS, but he insisted on an allegation that none of VRS Commanders and members knew about those crimes.

When asked by judge Christoph Flugge how he knew that commanders did not know about those crimes, Simovic said that he “thinks” that they did not know, because, otherwise, the commanders would have punished the perpetrators.  

Next Defence witness Nenad Deronjic, who began his testimony today, is due to continue testifying tomorrow, July 22. He is the first Defence witness testifying about the happenings in Srebrenica in the summer of 1995.

The indictment charges general Mladic with genocide against more than 7,000 Srebrenica Muslims, as well as terror against the local population in Sarajevo and taking UN “blue helmets” hostage.