Serbian Red Berets Fighter Accused of Lying to Court
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Prosecution witness Sliskovic testified on Tuesday that Stanisic commanded the ‘Pauk’ (‘Spider’) operation in western Bosnia in 1994 and 1995.
Sliskovic, a former member of the Serbian State Security Service’s Anti-Terrorist Actions Unit, JATD, said he participated in the Pauk operation alongside members of the Red Berets, the Serbian Volunteer Guard commanded by Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan, the Scorpions unit and other Serb forces.
He said he was a member of the security team guarding Stanisic’s command post in the wartime self-proclaimed Serb-led Republic of Serbian Krajina rebel statelet in Croatia.
During, cross-examination Stanisic’s lawyer Wayne Jordash asked the witness who commanded the Pauk operation.
“Jovica Stanisic,” Sliskovic answered, adding that Stanisic issued orders to his subordinate Simatovic.
But Jordash said that Stanisic’s name was mentioned “only twice over the course of six months” in the official war diary of the Pauk operation.
The lawyer suggested that the witness had never heard Stanisic issue an order to Milorad Ulemek, alias Legija, who at the time was a senior officer with Arkan’s Serbian Volunteer Guard.
Jordash also asked the witness whether he personally saw Stanisic issue orders to Red Berets unit officer Radojica Bozovic. Sliskovic responded: “Not personally.”
“You made it up that a large number of JATD members participated in combat activities in Velika Kladusa [in Bosnia],” Jordash insisted, suggesting that they were only involved in security and reconnaissance-related work.
“I am not making it up. I am under oath and I would not mess with that,” Sliskovic responded.
Stanisic, the former chief of the Serbian State Security Service, and his former assistant Simatovic are charged with having been protagonists in a joint criminal enterprise led by then Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, aimed at permanently and forcibly removing Bosniaks and Croats from large parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to achieve Serb domination.
Although the indictment does not charge Stanisic and Simatovic with crimes committed in the Pauk operation, the prosecutors are presenting evidence about the operation in an attempt to show the defendants’ pattern of behaviour as protagonists in the joint criminal enterprise.
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, the Serbian Volunteer Guard and other units controlled by the State Security Service.
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.
