Closing Arguments in Stanisic, Zupljanin Case

Friday, 1 June, 2012

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Velma Šarić

IWPR-trained journalist

In closing arguments this week at the trial of two former senior Bosnian Serb police officials, Mico Stanisic and Stojan Zupljanin, prosecutors asked for life imprisonment for both men for crimes allegedly committed against non-Serbs during 1992.

Stanisic’s and Zupljanin’s defence lawyers called for their clients to be acquitted of all charges.

Zupljanin, the former chief of the Regional Security Services Centre of Banja Luka in northwestern Bosnia, is accused of extermination, murder, persecution, and deportation of non-Serbs in northwestern Bosnia.

Stanisic, who was interior minister of Republika Srpska, RS, during the war, is charged with the murder, torture and cruel treatment of non-Serb civilians, and is also accused of failing to prevent or punish crimes committed by his subordinates.

Stanisic and Zupljanin are alleged to have participated in a joint criminal enterprise aimed at permanently removing non-Serbs from the territory of an intended Serbian state. They are accused of crimes committed between April 1 and December 31, 1992, over 20 municipalities throughout Bosnia.

They are charged with ten counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Both defendants – whose indictments were joined together in September 2008 – have pleaded not guilty on all counts.

In his closing arguments, prosecutor Alex Demirjan said there was sufficient evidence to prove all the crimes listed in the indictment.

According to the prosecution, these crimes were “consequences of the activities [of the Serb leadership] who realised that their aims had to be implemented through force, since their political effort to oppose the creation of Bosnia-Hercegovina as an independent state had not been successful”.

Demirjan said Bosnian Serb police had been instrumental in carrying out criminal acts that occurred “following a systematic pattern”.

Their actions included taking over police stations and “transforming them into Serb police stations”, he said, noting that this happened in areas that that were not exclusively or majority Serb-populated.

“A large number of persons of Bosniak and Croat nationality were arrested by Republika Srpska police and detained in a variety of facilities,” Demirjan said.

These facilities ranged from cells at police stations to detention centres and in most of them prisoners were held in “inhumane conditions”, he said.

Demirjan said that for most of the trial, the defence did not deny that crimes had occurred, “but rather tried to prove that [Stanisic and Zupljanin] had not known about the crimes, and… could not sanction those who had perpetrated them”.

Prosecutor Joanna Korner then presented arguments about the defendants’ positions and alleged levels of responsibility.

Korner told the court that Zupljanin had “persistently claimed that his activity during the war had been limited to strictly administrative police work, whereas the police on the ground were subordinated to the Bosnian Serb Army, VRS, and therefore he had nothing to do with them.”

But Korner said it made no sense that Zupljanin had rejected responsibility for the special operations unit of the Banja Luka police centre, when identification cards and administrative papers there had been personally signed “with his name, signature and position”.

She alleged that Stanisic, as RS minister of internal affairs, “did whatever he could to achieve the goals of the broader project that was going on, the joint criminal enterprise”.

“In fact, Stanisic’s contribution to the project was apparently greatly appreciated by the Bosnian Serb leadership,” she added.

She also accused Stanisic of failing to do anything to “sanction any of the perpetrators who were part of the police force”.

Stanisic’s defence lawyer Slobodan Zecevic asked for his client to be acquitted of all charges, and said the prosecution had misunderstood the details of the case.

Zecevic said the prosecution had “completely failed to understand the entire context in which my client had acted and [to] dig beyond the monochromatic surface of events”.

He said his client was not consciously aware of, nor a member of, any joint enterprise, “let alone a criminal one”. Even if such an enterprise had existed, he said, Stanisic’s actions clearly demonstrated his intention to prevent criminal activities.

“Stanisic and the RS government, as had been proven, had repeatedly warned… the army and the municipal authorities that all the laws and procedures regarding to police work must be respected and that the authority of the ministry of internal affairs must be kept intact,” Zecevic said.

However, he also said that the chain of command could have become muddled. It was almost impossible, he said, for a minister to know who “the police on the ground were listening to and whether in fact the [interior] ministry had any authority over them at all”.

Stanisic was completely unaware of any misconduct by police on the ground, Zecevic said.

Zupljanin’s defence lawyer, Igor Pantelic, described his client as a simple policeman, “merely a clerk”, who was powerless to prevent crimes from being committed.

“The time was such that not even a superhero, let alone a simple administrator, would have been able to change something on the ground,” Pantelic said.

Stanisic surrendered in March 2005, while Zupljanin was arrested by the Serbian authorities in June 2008, after 13 years as a fugitive.

Both men have been on trial since 2009.

Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained reporter in Sarajevo.