Serbian Security Service ‘Not Involved in Bosnia Violence’

A protected prosecution witness codenamed RFJ-165, who said he was a member of the Red Berets under the command of Radojica Bozovic in May 1992, had told the trial that Bozovic was an officer of the Serbian State Security Service, SDB, and participated in capturing the town of Doboj.

The witness said that members of ‘Red Berets’ participated in the deportation, murder and torture of the non-Serb population in the area.

But Simatovic’s defence sought to prove that Bozovic was not an officer of the Serbian SDB at that time, while not denying that he became one later.

As indicated in Serbian SDB documents, which defence lawyer Mihajlo Bakrac cited in court, Bozovic was admitted to the Anti-Terrorist Action Unit or JATD of the Serbian SDB, also known as the ‘Red Berets’, as permanent staff only in November 1993 – after the alleged crimes.

“The evidence shows that Bozovic had neither been employed in the Serbian SDB nor JATD prior to that date,” Bakrac said.

But the witness insisted that in the spring of 1992, Serb policemen in Doboj told him that Bozovic and instructors at a Red Berets camp on Mount Ozren were members of the Serbian SDB.

When asked if he had any material evidence to support his allegation that Bozovic was a member of the Serbian SDB, witness RFJ-165 said no, adding that it was not possible to get hold of such evidence.

Jovica Stanisic, the former chief of the Serbian State Security Service, and his former assistant Franko Simatovic are being retried for persecution, murders and deportations during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

According to the charges, the Red Berets were under the control of the Serbian State Security Service.

The indictment alleges that Stanisic and Simatovic committed their crimes as part of a joint criminal enterprise aimed at forcibly and permanently removing Croats and Bosniaks from large parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which would then be incorporated into a unified Serb state. The enterprise was allegedly led by Slobodan Milosevic.

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 Tuesday.