‘No Evidence’ that Serbian Security Commanded Paramilitaries

The defence lawyer for Jovica Stanisic told the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Tuesday that a prosecution military expert’s assertion that the Serbian State Security Service, SDB, controlled Serbian paramilitaries during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina was wrong.

Prosecution military expert Reynaud Theunens maintained that the ‘Tigers’, led by Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan, the Scorpions and other paramilitary forces, were “under the control of the Serbian SDB” or “associated with it in some other way” in the period from 1991 to 1995.

Theunens, who analysed numerous military documents, said that he had made this conclusion primarily on the basis of field reports prepared by Yugoslav People’s Army, JNA and Yugoslav Army intelligence bodies from that period.

Stanisic’s defence lawyer Wayne Jordash said however that only two JNA reports mentioned the relationship between Arkan’s fighters and the SDB, suggesting that Theunens misinterpreted the documents and attached too much importance to them.

Jordash quoted a part of a military intelligence report from October 1991 to which Theunens referred, saying that “rumours are circulating among JNA members” that “Arkan comes after the Army has cleaned up villages and commits crimes”, and that “they think he does it with the support of the Serbian SDB”.

Theunens had quoted part of the report, indicating that there was “a belief” among JNA troops that Arkan’s fighters committed crimes with the support of the Serbian SDB.

Jordash called this “a corny undocumented belief”.

Theunens responded by saying that he had made the conclusion on the link between Arkan and the SDB “on the basis of many documents, not just one”.

He mentioned a recording of JNA general Andrija Biorcevic praising Arkan in Croatia’s Eastern Slavonia region in 1991 and saying that the paramilitary chief entered areas that had been taken by the JNA and killed anyone who had not surrendered.

“Arkan operated in the period from 1991 to 1995 and documents point to his link with the Serbian SDB,” Theunens said.

Stanisic and his former assistant Franko Simatovic, alias Frenki, are on trial for the persecution, murders and deportations of Croat and Bosniak civilians during the Croatian and Bosnian wars.

The indictment alleges that the Serbian SDB, headed by the defendants, controlled Arkan’s unit and the Scorpions, whose members committed some of the crimes.

At Tuesday’s hearing, Stanisic’s lawyer also denied the existence of evidence of a link between the Scorpions paramilitary unit and the Serbian SDB in Croatia.

But Theunens said the Serbian SDB had “recruited, trained and equipped” Scorpions members in Croatia’s Eastern Slavonia region.

He added that the Scorpions fighters could not have gone to war in Bosnia and Herzegovina just “because they felt like it”.

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.

Stanisic’s defence will continue cross-examining Theunens on Tuesday.