Serbian Security Chief Challenges Journalist’s War Testimony

Jovica Stanisic’s defence lawyer Wayne Jordash told Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic’s retrial at the Mechanism for International Tribunals in The Hague on Thursday that Belgrade journalist Dejan Anastasijevic did not offer a single piece of concrete evidence for his assertion that the Serbian security service used the Red Berets and Arkan’s paramilitaries as “combat units” during the Bosnian and Croatian wars.

Anastasijevic testified on Wednesday that the Red Berets unit, the Serbian Volunteer Guard led by Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan, and other paramilitary forces under the control of the Serbian State Security Service, SDB, implemented Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic’s plan to “set up new borders between republics” in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Jordash asked Anastasijevic: “With which member of the Serbian SDB Arkan maintained contacts in 1991?”

Anastasijevic responded by saying that Raznatovic “had the SDB’s approval, blessing and help in organising the guard, which could otherwise not have been formed”.

When the defence lawyer asked Anastasijevic again about which member of the Serbian SDB Arkan was in contact with, the witness said he “did not have an insight into operational data”.

Addressing the witness’ allegation that “individual members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Serbia were de facto commanders of paramilitary units in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina”, Stanisic’s lawyer asked who these men were.

Anastasijevic, who covered the Bosnian and Croatian wars for the Serbian weekly news magazine Vreme, said he could not name them because “many people did not appear there under their real names”, adding that he only had “indirect findings” on the subject.

As “the only concrete example”, Anastasijevic said that in the spring of 1993, Belgrade theatre director Dragoslav Bokan told him that he was “just formally the commander of the White Eagles [paramilitary unit], while men from the Serbian SDB were in command behind the scenes”.

The defence lawyer said this meant that the witness “has no evidence” to prove his allegation that Serbian SDB officers commanded the paramilitary forces allegedly involved in wartime crimes in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

According to the charges, Stanisic, the former chief of the Serbian SDB, and his former assistant Simatovic were protagonists in a joint criminal enterprise led by Milosevic aimed at permanently and forcibly removing Bosniaks and Croats from large parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to achieve Serb domination.

Stanisic and Simatovic are charged with persecution, murders and deportations in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which according to the charges were committed by members of the Red Berets and other units controlled by the Serbian SDB.

Stanisic and Simatovic 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.