Person: Stanisic Jovica

The defence for the former Serbian State Security official Franko Simatovic dismissed testimony given by a witness who said Simatovic delivered arms to the Croatian Serbs in 1990. Cross-examining a protected witness codenamed RFJ-066, Franko Simatovic's defence lawyer, Mihajlo Bakrac, said his client could not have transported around 400 rifles by two SUV cars that belonged to the Serbian Interior Ministry from Belgrade via Bosnia to Knin in Croatia, as the witness alleged during his main testimony in July.

The retrial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, two former leaders of the Serbian State Security Service, SDB, for crimes in Croatia and Bosnia continues on Tuesday.

The defence lawyer for former Serbian State Security Service chief Jovica Stanisic told the UN war crimes tribunal that rebel Serbs in Croatia mostly got weapons from the Yugoslav People’s Army, not the security service.

Former Serbian State Security official Franko Simatovic’s lawyer argued that Slobodan Milosevic could not have been the leader of a Serb criminal enterprise in Bosnia and Croatia because he accepted an international peace plan.

Former Serbian State Security chief Jovica Stanisic’s defence lawyer told the Hague war crimes court that Slobodan Milosevic had influence but not command over Serb leaders in Bosnia and Croatia.

At the retrial of former Serbian security officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, a witness said Serb paramilitary groups like Arkan’s Tigers and the Red Berets carried out ethnic cleansing under Belgrade’s command.

Former Serbian security chief Jovica Stanisic’s lawyer told the Hague Tribunal that the Yugoslav People’s Army was responsible for crimes in the Serb-led Republic of Serbian Krajina wartime statelet in Croatia in 1991. The defence lawyer for former Serbian State Security Service chief Jovica Stanisic, who is being retried alongside his former deputy Franko Simatovic, sought to prove at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Thursday that the Yugoslav People’s Army (JNA) was responsible for crimes committed in the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina during the conflict in 1991.