Witness Recalls Surviving Shooting by Arkan’s Paramilitaries

The witness testified that in September 1995, Arkan’s men took 12 Bosniaks, including himself, from the Sanus hotel in Sanski Most, where Arkan had examined them, to the nearby village of Trnova.

“Not a single thing could have happened without Arkan approving and ordering it,” the witness said.

According to the witness’s testimony, on arrival in Trnova, the paramilitaries took the Bosniaks from the truck, handcuffed in pairs, to a nearby house. While they were approaching the house, the witness heard gunshots from that direction.

“They took the handcuffs off in front of the door. I asked if they could somehow avoid killing. A soldier said: ‘Yes, you are lucky to have fallen into Arkan’s hands. Give us 5,000 Deutschmarks each,’” he recalled.

“I said I was from Kljuc and had no money with me, while the man standing next to me said he had 200 marks. They cursed the 200 marks and forced us to go inside the house,” he added.

On entering the house, the witness said he saw “dead people and pools of blood”.

“As soon as I stepped inside, a bullet hit me in the back. I fell down and broke two of my ribs,” he said.

When another pair of prisoners entered the house, a paramilitary ordered then to kneel down.

“He told the second soldier, the one called Zeljo: ‘You get the sweetest part of the job’… I heard the sound of a knife being pulled out. They slaughtered both of them, while their blood splashed my face,” the witness said.

One of Raznatovic’s men then said there were survivors, so the paramilitaries began shooting the victims in their heads, he continued.

“They moved from one man to another, lit them with a flashlight and shot them in the head. The light came to me, a bullet was fired. It hit me in my chin,” he added.

After the soldiers had left, he fled to a nearby village.

According to the charges, Stanisic, the former chief of the Serbian State Security Service, and Simatovic, who was his assistant, were protagonists in a joint criminal enterprise led by Slobodan 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 Arkan’s Serbian Volunteer Guard paramilitary group and the Red Berets unit, which the prosecution claims were controlled by the Serbian State Security Service.

During cross-examination, Stanisic and Simatovic’s defence lawyers said they did not deny the truthfulness of the witness’s testimony.

But Stanisic’s lawyer Ian Edwards tried to disassociate Arkan from the crimes committed by his men.

Edwards suggested that the witness “can’t be a 100 per cent sure that Raznatovic saw them put handcuffs on your hands and load you onto the truck”.

The witness confirmed that, but said Arkan was in a hotel room right next to the place where the prisoners were loaded up.

“You did not hear him ordering that?” Stanisic’s lawyer asked.

“No,” the witness answered, repeating that he had the impression that nothing could have happened without Arkan approving it.

“You did not hear Arkan order the shooting,” the defence lawyer suggested.

The witness agreed this was true.

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 on Wednesday.