“Do you recognise the person we are looking at?”

The prosecutor at the UN court in The Hague was addressing witness Stojan Novakovic, alias Cope, showing him a video made outside the disused Velepromet industrial warehouse in Vukovar, where prisoners were held after the fall of the Croatian town in November 1991.

“Yes, that’s me,” Novakovic responded.

The video showed that as well as Novakovic, Goran Hadzic, the president of the government of the self-proclaimed Serbian Autonomous Area of Slavonia, Baranja and West Srem, a Serb rebel region within Croatia, was there in Vukovar that day.

Also shown in the video was Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan, the leader of the Serbian Volunteer Guard paramilitary unit, and some other people who Novakovic did not name.

The video was shown as evidence on October 8, during the retrial of former Serbian State Security officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals.

It was the last video to be shown during the trial, and again pointed to the presence of fighters from Serbia on the battlefront – in this case, Arkan’s so-called ‘Tigers’.

Defence witness Novakovic was the last to testify in the trial, concluding the witness testimony in the case.

Closing arguments will be heard in the last week of March 2021 and the verdict is expected sometime in the first half of next year.

Stanisic and Simatovic are accused of participation in a joint criminal enterprise led by then Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, aimed at permanently and forcibly removing Croats and Bosniaks from large parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to achieve Serb domination. To achieve this, they used paramilitary units like Arkan’s to do the fighting, the indictment claims.

The charges cover the period from April 1, 1991 to December 31, 1995, which means they cover the entire duration of the wars in both countries, Jovana Kolaric from the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Centre pointed out.

“This case gives us an insight into the involvement of Serbian state structures in the war, and the ways in which they formed, trained, financed and controlled various units that operated in those areas throughout the war,” Kolaric told BIRN.

Killers filmed their own crime

Screenshot from the video of the Scorpions’ killings of Bosniaks in Trnovo in 1995. Source: Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals.

During the retrial, various documents were shown as evidence in court: orders, reports, personnel files, military logs, as well as videos.

One of the most shocking videos used as evidence was from the Bosnian war, which showed members of the Scorpions, a Serb paramilitary unit, killing six captured Bosniaks in the village of Trnovo in July 1995. It was filmed by the Scorpions themselves.

Prosecution witness Goran Stoparic, who was a member of the Scorpions, said he was nearby during the killing and named those who participated in the crime. Stoparic also said that his commander was ultimately subordinate to defendant Jovica Stanisic, and that both the Scorpions and Arkan’s fighters were “helpful units for the Serbian Security Service”.

Five people was were convicted of the Trnovo killings by a Serbian court, but the verdict did not establish the connection between the Scorpions and Serbian state institutions.

“In that verdict, it was clear that the strategy was to keep the focus in war crimes trials on individuals, on an individual level, not to look for middle-ranking perpetrators and not to question the participation of Serbian institutions in the crimes that were committed, but also in the war in general,” said Kolaric.

“The Stanisic and Simatovic case deals with the establishment of the Scorpions unit and its activities during the war and can help us understand the way in which such units were created, as well as the connection that existed between this unit and the security and military structures of Serbia, [Bosnia’s Serb-dominated entity] Republika Srpska and the Republic of Serbian Krajina [a self-proclaimed Serb rebel statelet inside Croatia],” she explained.

The main defence thesis in the Stanisic and Simatovic case was that wartime operations were run by either the Yugoslav People’s Army or the Public Security Service, which was part of the Serbian Interior Ministry, not by State Security.

Some defence witnesses who worked for or still work for the Serbian Interior Ministry or the State Security Service claimed they did not know about its connection to the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, or insisted that what was claimed about the State Security Service’s involvement was just bragging.

Reinterpreting the facts

Jovica Stanisic (second right) with Bosnian Serb President Biljana Plavsic (third left) at Banja Luka’s airport in September 1997. Photo: EPA/DRAGO VEJNOVIC.

Apart from the appeal in the case against former Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, this was the last trial at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals for crimes committed during the 1990s Yugoslav wars.

Although it could have a significant effect on the perception of Serbia’s role in the Croatian and Bosnian conflicts, it did not get a lot of coverage in Serbian media.

“With the exception of a few mostly print or online media, the media in Serbia do not cover trials in a systematic and comprehensive way. Even when reporting on trials, there is not much of an analytical approach, it all comes down to just presenting basic information,” Kolaric told BIRN.

The retrial of Stanisic and Simatovic was not a major talking point for Serbian politicians either.

“The authorities have two ways of doing things when it comes to trials at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals – either they are completely silent about them, or they work on relativising and reinterpreting the procedures and the facts that are established,” Kolaric explained.

“In such a situation, discussion about a case dealing with the participation of the security structures of the state of Serbia in the wars is extremely narrow, it is practically reduced to several independent media and the civil sector,” she added.

Jovica Stanisic was the chief of Serbian State Security, while Franko ‘Frenki’ Simatovic was his deputy and, according to the indictment, a commander of State Security’s Special Operations Unit.

Beside the Special Operations Unit’s alleged participation in the Bosnian and Croatian wars, which is the subject of the Stanisic and Simatovic case, it was also well-known by for its activities at home.

In 2003, its members, together with an organised crime group, assassinated Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic. Stanisic and Simatovic were actually arrested and transferred to the Hague court’s custody during the large-scale police operation that was launched in the wake of Djindjic’s murder.

Both men pleaded not guilty when they first appeared in court in 2003, and have continued to insist on their innocence ever since.

They were acquitted in 2013, but the verdict was overturned in 2015, when their retrial begin.

The proceedings against them have now been going on for 17 years, and Iva Vukusic, a lecturer at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, said that it is “disappointing” that much of the public in the former Yugoslavia knows nothing about their trial.

“One reason why attention is lacking is time – it has gone on way too long,” Vukusic told BIRN, adding that such a lengthy court process is not fair to the victims or the accused.

“Secondly, it was often held behind closed doors and therefore, hard to follow. Thirdly, there is little dramatic TV in this trial. Jovica and Frenki are, like true intelligence and security operatives, quiet,” she said.

Waiting for the verdict

Jovica Stanisic on television during the during Bosnian war. Source: ICTY archive.

Stanisic has not been attending hearings since he was released from custody in the Netherlands in July 2017 and allowed to return to Serbia because of health issues.

His lawyer, Wayne Jordash, said that the 70-year-old’s medical problems have deteriorated as the trial has dragged on.

“Mr. Stanisic has a number of serious medical complaints which have been well documented. As has also been well documented, their seriousness depends upon a number of factors, not least of which is stress. Accordingly, his serious medical conditions are impacted, to say the least, by the terrible fact that he has been on trial at the ICTY/RMICT [Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals] for 17 years,” Jordash told BIRN.

He said that “there was no good reason for a retrial” and that the case should have been returned to the first trial chamber at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY to address any errors.

“Instead, the ICTY Appeal Chamber abandoned legal principle and fairness, and, for its own convenience, ordered a retrial with predictable and consequences, not only for Mr. Stanisic, but for the nearly 200 witnesses, many of them victims, who have been forced to relive the events, in many instances more than 25 years after they occurred,” Jordash argued.

“As a result, and despite skilful and humane management by the current Trial Chamber, the retrial continues to undermine Mr. Stanisic’s health,” he added.

Jordash said that Stanisic would be able to come to court for closing arguments in the trial and will have to be present for the verdict.

During the trial, as well as hearing testimony from former members of various combat units, the Hague court also heard from witnesses who spoke about crimes committed against them or their relatives in towns like Erdut, Skabrnja and Saborsko in Croatia and Zvornik and Doboj in Bosnia.

They testified how they were unlawfully detained in Croatia and in Serbia itself, and some described how they were severely beaten and tortured.

Like the defendants, they will be also waiting for the verdict to be handed down in one of the longest trials to be held as a result of the Yugoslav wars.