Serbian Security Chief Denies Controlling ‘Red Berets’ Unit
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A former Serbian policeman, whose unit operated in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1993, testified as a protected prosecution witness on Tuesday that the Red Berets expelled Bosniaks from eastern Bosnia, operating as part of the Serbian State Security Service, the SDB.
But Stanisic’s defence lawyer Wayne Jordash said the witness “had no evidence” that the Serbian SDB deployed the Red Berets in the Skelani area of eastern Bosnia, where the alleged crimes were committed.
“Nobody told you they operated under the command of Jovica Stanisic… or that they were employed by the Serbian SDB,” Jordash suggested.
The witness responded by saying that none of the Red Berets members told him they were commanded by Stanisic, but that he concluded, on the basis of conversations, that they were “engaged by the Serbian SDB under the leadership of Frenki Simatovic”.
Stanisic and his former State Security Service deputy Franko ‘Frenki’ Simatovic are on trial for persecution, murders and deportations during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
According to the charges, the Red Berets were under the control of the Serbian State Security Service.
Stanisic’s lawyer suggested that, while in Bosnia, the Red Berets and the witness’s unit were under the command of police general Obrad Stevanovic, commander of the Serbian Interior Ministry’s special police units.
“Stevanovic was the commander of my unit, but I cannot say the same for the Red Berets,” the witness responded.
On the basis of documents issued by the Bosnian Serb Army, Stanisic’s lawyer suggested that the Red Berets in Skelani and the surrounding area were “deserters” and “elite robbers” who were not under anybody’s control.
“The question arises as to who pays them and whose interests they serve,” Jordash said, quoting a Bosnian Serb Army report on the Red Berets issued in July 1993.
The witness responded by saying that, during his unit’s operations in Bosnia, its members “acted according to the law”, unlike the Red Berets.
The indictment alleges that Stanisic and Simatovic committed their crimes as part of a joint criminal enterprise aimed at forcibly and permanently removing Croats and Bosniaks from large parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which would then be incorporated into a unified Serb state.
They both pleaded not guilty in December 2015 after the appeals chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia overturned their acquittal in their first trial.
The appeals chamber ruled 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.
The trial continues on Thursday.
