Serbian Red Berets ‘Killed Civilian Captives’ in Bosnia
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Hadzovic said that around 50 captured Bosniaks and Croats were used as human shields by the Red Berets during an attack by the Bosnian Army on Doboj on July 12, 1992.
The witness testified that before the prisoners were forced to act as human shields, the Red Berets’ commander, whose subordinates referred to him as ‘Golub’, “pulled his pistol and killed prisoner Drago Kalem, saying: ‘This will happen to all those who try to flee.”
The captives were then forced to move toward the Bosnian Army positions, while Serb soldiers opened fire behind them, Hadzovic said.
Many of the prisoners were killed, but the witness said he managed to run away together with another Bosniak man.
Hadzovic added that in 2000, he helped in the identification of 27 of the corpses that were found in a mass grave. Drago Kalem was one of the victims.
Stanisic, the former chief of the Serbian State Security Service, SDB, and his assistant Simatovic, are charged with the persecution, murders, deportations and forcible transfer of civilians during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
According to the charges, the crimes were committed by paramilitary forces under the control of the Serbian SDB, such as the Red Berets.
The prosecution alleges that the Red Berets in Doboj were led by Zivojin Ivanovic, also known as Zika Crnogorac, one of the prominent members of the Serbian SDB’s Special Operations Unit.
During the cross-examination of Hadzovic, Simatovic’s defence said that ‘Golub’, who killed the prisoner, was actually another man, ‘Golub Maksimovic’. The witness responded that he did not know that.
Hadzovic accepted a suggestion by Simatovic’s defense attorney that local officials Milovan Stankovic, Andrija Bjelosevic and Milan Ninkovic were in a position of authority in Doboj.
Ninkovic, a former member of the Crisis Committee in the Doboj municipality, and Bjelosevic, former chief of the police Security Services Centre in Doboj, are currently on trial for war crimes at the Bosnian state court.
The witness also confirmed having heard police chief Bjelosevic giving approval to Golub, via a radio link, to march the prisoners out as ‘human shields’, recommending that he “act in a humane manner”.
Responding to a suggestion from the defence that Stankovic, Bjelosevic and Ninkovic had control “over all those [paramilitary] formations” whose members wore red berets, the witness responded: “I don’t know, I assume they did.”
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 Thursday.
