Chetnik Discloses Ties With Yugoslav Army

A leader of the Chetnik Movement in Vojvodina, Serbia testified that Serbs were the aggressors in Croatia and Bosnia (at least where he visited) during the war. Witness C-47 said he heard in the media that the Serb population in Croatia “was jeopardized to a maximum,” that crimes were being committed against them and they were being killed. Direct experience showed him a different reality. “I went to the war operation zones and saw for the most part it was not true. . . . I saw our army was the aggressor on the territory of the Republic of Croatia. They were committing killings, destroying houses, taking possession of villages, houses, towns; territories were being ethnically cleansed.” The witness also went to Bosnia: 'I saw the same thing there, where I was.'

This was but one part of startling testimony from an avowed Serbian monarchist, who was swayed by Vojislav Seselj to help organize the Serbian Radical Party (SRS) and the Serbian Chetnik Movement (Chetniks) in Subotica, Serbia in 1990. He apparently became disenchanted with Seselj, whose actions did not follow his words. Initially vehemently anti-communist as well as a monarchist and Serb nationalist, after 1991 Seselj dropped all but the nationalism to support Milosevic, at least privately.

The Serb Chetnik Movement is a continuation from WWII Chetniks led by Draza Mihajlovic who fought the Croat Ustasha and Tito’s Communist Partisans. According to C-47, the Movement went underground and emerged again in 1990. The 1990’s Chetniks adopted the insignia (double headed eagle with skull and crossbones) and the beards of Mihajlovic’s group. All Chetniks had to be members of the SRS, as well. The Chetniks were considered the fighting arm of the SRS.

The witness saw Seselj at a rally in Subotica in late 1990. He recalled part of Seselj's speech, 'He declared he would take out eyes with rusted forks and spoons of non-Serbs -- Hungarians and Croats -- who were not loyal to Serb authorities.' There followed a campaign of terrorism and harassment against non-Serbs in Subotica, including blowing up a cathedral. Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia (SPS) collaborated with the SRS which organized and led the campaign. They were in daily contact, according to C-47. As a result, 20,000 Hungarians and a large number of Croats were expelled from Vojvodina, the witness testified.

C-47 also authenticated various SRS documents, including its manifesto and the Statute under which it was registered with the authorities. A stated goal of the party was an independent state of Serbia which encompassed territories where Serbs lived -- in Serbia, Croatia and Bosnia, what came to be known as 'Greater Serbia.'

The Chetniks had their best recruitment success among Yugoslav soldiers and Sebian police. Many of the volunteers were trained, armed and equipped at Yugoslav Army (JNA) facilities, and they were issued JNA camouflage uniforms on which they sewed Chetnik insignia. When Lead Prosecutor Geoffrey Nice asked C-47 how the JNA officers in the field reacted to that, the witness said they had “absolutely no problem with it.”

While the Chetniks have often been depicted as undisciplined and outside the command and control of regular Serb forces, witness C-47 told a different story. Serb forces in Croatia and later Bosnia sent requests for troops and materiel to the SRS Headquarters in Belgrade, which forwarded the requests to local SRS Boards and specifically the SPC (Chetnik) officers to fill. Parts of one such request were read out in Court: “We expect your help in manpower as soon and as urgently as possible and ask the Minister of Defense in Serbia to approve clothing, equipment . . . .” C-47 said that he was aware the Serbian Minister of Defense was involved, as well as JNA officers on the ground: “That means,” he explained, “they took an active part from Serbia in Croatia. In Bosnia as well.” Chetnik volunteers were bused to their destination in state-owned company buses escorted by police or military. On arrival at their field post, the volunteers reported to the Territorial Defense command and the JNA, who were one and the same, according to the witness.

While on duty, Chetnik volunteers continued to receive their salaries and benefits from state-owned companies. In addition, their service was counted double time for state pension purposes. As C-47 said, they were treated the same as regular JNA soldiers and reservists, except that reservists could become regular JNA soldiers, while Chetnik volunteers could not.

Another way Chetniks served regular forces was as a scapegoat for their crimes, the witness said. The Prosecution produced a document which C-47 authenticated as a public announcement by the SRS of Northeastern Bosnia on 27 September 1992. In it, the Commander, also a Chetnik Vojvoda (Duke), strongly protested an incident where members of two families were taken away by special police units in the Republika Srpska and liquidated. He did so, the witness said, because he did not want the massacres attributed to the SRS.

Not all atrocities ascribed to Chetniks were scapegoating, however. C-47 witnessed two Chetniks rape and murder a girl in November 1991. They brought the girl to Major Slobodan Katic, Commander of all SRS volunteers in Vukovar, and said they’d taken her so she would show where money and weapons were buried, then they would rape her. Though C-47 protested, the Major said nothing. The two Chetniks cocked their automatic rifles and threatened to kill him. The witness reported the crime to police officers and to the President of the SRS in Subotica, Bozidar Vujic, who is now a Member of Parliament. The authorities reacted as if it was a completely normal thing to happen in wartime, C-47 testified.

He also said there were Chetniks known for cruelty in their methods of killing. Men nicknamed “Swaba” and “Kinez” killed Croats by slitting their throats, and cutting off their noses and ears. C-47 testified that he was not aware that any Chetnik was ever disciplined for war crimes.

The witness also saw members of Arkan’s Tigers murder two civilians in Tordinci, Croatia. While Arkan and Goran Hadzic, president of the Serb Autonomous Region of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Srem, were congratulating one another before TV cameras, two Tigers passed nearby. One had his weapon trained on an elderly man whose hands were tied in front of him. The other pointed his gun at a younger man. The two soldiers were cursing the captives’ “Ustasha Croat mothers.” C-47 heard shots and saw the old man and the younger man lying dead on the pavement. As for Arkan and Hadzic, he said, “They must have seen it because they were shooting from automatic weapons quite near. They must have turned around to see what was going on.” There was no reaction and no disciplinary action was taken, to the witness's knowledge.

The Prosecution ended the first day of C-47's testimony by showing a brief video clip of Vojislav Seselj. In it, Seselj says that the JNA turned over Buban Potok, one of its training facilities in Serbia, to the SRS, supplying them with weapons, equipment and uniforms. The witness confirmed it was true.

Seselj's role as a lightening rod for Milosevic is not news. His extremist position allowed Milosevic to appear moderate and play the international interlocutor when it suited him. That the SRS supported Milosevic's policies and the JNA supported the Chetniks in implementing them shows a different reality lurked below the surface Milosevic attempted to create. Witnesses like C-47 are coming forward to present that different reality, and as they do, Milosevic's mirage grows less and less substantial.