Belgrade-Backed Paramilitaries Blamed for Ethnic Cleansing

John Wilson, who was the chief of the United Nations’ military observers from 1992 to 1993, told Stanisic and Simatovic’s retrial at the Mechanism for International Tribunals in The Hague on Tuesday that Serb paramilitary forces committed “widespread crimes” in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina at the time.

“Ethnic cleansing went on all the time,” Wilson said.

Wilson said the so-called Red Berets were “present and active”, adding that “nobody knew who commanded them, but it was known they had come from Serbia”.

He said that they “operated throughout Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina”, driving out non-Serbs by committing crimes against them.

“Nobody did anything to repulse that,” the witness said.

In order to prove that the Red Berets were a Serbian State Security Service unit, prosecutor Adam Weber presented a document issued by the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina, a self-proclaimed wartime statelet in Croatia, which stated the Red Berets were part of the Serbian Interior Ministry.

The former chief of the Serbian State Security Service, Jovica Stanisic, and his former assistant Franko Simatovic, alias Frenki, are charged with persecution, murders, deportations and the forcible resettlement of Croat and Bosniak civilians during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina from 1991 to 1995.

According to the charges, the Tigers, led by Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan, and the Red Berets, initially commanded by Simatovic, were run by the Serbian State Security Service.

Stanisic and Simatovic both pleaded not guilty in December last year after the appeals chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia overturned their acquittal in their first trial.

The tribunal ruled on December 15 that there were serious legal and factual errors when Stanisic and Simatovic were initially acquitted of war crimes in 2013, and ordered the case to be retried and all the evidence and witnesses reheard in full by new judges.

Witness Wilson suggested that the ethnic cleansing operations would not have been possible without political and military support from the Belgrade authorities.

Senior UN officials raised the issue at “more than ten meetings” with the Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, which Wilson attended.

“Milosevic was very well informed. He clearly understood the situation… He knew what was happening and what he wanted,” the witness said.

According to Wilson, when faced with complaints about crimes and ethnic cleansing, Milosevic tried to shift the blame onto local Serb leaders, claiming that Belgrade was unable to influence them.

But the international mediators believed that Milosevic was actually the one pulling the strings of Serb leaders in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Wilson said.

The trial continues on Wednesday.