Serbian Ex-Official Accuses Journalist of Biased Testimony

Franko Simatovic’s defence lawyer Mihajlo Bakrac told the Mechanism for International Tribunals in The Hague on Wednesday that prosecution witness Dejan Anastasijevic, a Belgrade-based journalist, only had indirect knowledge of the events about which he testified, and offered no evidence for his allegations.

Bakrac cited an article written by Anastasijevic in 2002 after he had testified at Slobodan Milosevic’s trial at the Hague Tribunal.

In the article, which was published in Belgrade weekly Vreme, Anastasijevic wrote: “All I had to say – was second-hand”.

When asked by Bakrac whether he still thinks the same, Anastasijevic responded by saying that “I now know much more” than in 2002.

“So, you are now testifying on the basis of findings you have acquired subsequently?” Bakrac asked.

“Yes,” Anastasijevic answered.

Anastasijevic previously testified that the Red Berets unit and paramilitaries led by Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan, were used by the Serbian State Security Service, SDB, in the Bosnian and Croatian wars.

Simatovic is being retried alongside his former boss Jovica Stanisic.

According to the charges, Stanisic, the former chief of the SDB, and Simatovic, who was his assistant, were protagonists in a joint criminal enterprise led by Milosevic aimed at permanently and forcibly removing Bosniaks and Croats from large parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina in order to achieve Serb domination.

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 and paramilitary units controlled by the Serbian SDB.

Bakrac claimed that Anastasijevic was “partial” because he wrote in another article published in 2015 that “the link between the Serbian SDB and paramilitary formations” which committed crimes “has been proven”, and that Stanisic and Simatovic would probably “get long-term prison sentences”.

He alleged that Anastasijevic “made up” an allegation contained in the article that paramilitary boss Arkan was on the Serbian SDB’s payroll.

“No, I did not make it up… I saw a document with his signature on it,” the journalist responded.

“Such piece of evidence does not exist,” Bakrac insisted.

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.