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Stanisic’s lawyer Wayne Jordash and Simatovic’s lawyer Mihajlo Bakrac presented several documents to the court, according to which Raznatovic’s so-called ‘Tigers’ paramilitaries operated in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995 as part of the Bosnian Serb Interior Ministry.
Jordash read an entry from the war diary of the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, Ratko Mladic, written during a major offensive in September 1995, saying that “300 of Arkan’s volunteers” had arrived and they had been “placed in the Bosnian Serb Interior Ministry to arrest deserters behind the frontline”.
Bakrac then cited what he called an authorisation given by Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic at the same time, calling on “the special unit of the Bosnian Serb Interior Ministry called the ‘Tigers’ to arrest all deserters and fugitives”.
The lawyers were cross-examining a protected prosecution witness who testified on Tuesday that the Tigers were under the control of the Serbian State Security Service.
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 paramilitary group and the Red Berets unit, which the prosecution claims were controlled by the Serbian State Security Service.
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 retrial continues on Thursday.
