Court Hears How SDS Moved Into Crisis Mode

An expert witness told the Hague war crimes tribunal this week that just before the outbreak of the 1992-95 Balkans war, local branches of the Bosnian Serb Democratic Party, SDS, were transformed into municipal crisis headquarters.



Dorothea Hanson was testifying at the trial of two former Bosnian Serb police commanders, Stojan Zupljanin and Mico Stanisic.



“The crisis headquarters represented a pattern of transformation from party organs into state authorities," Hanson said.



Zupljanin, who became an adviser to the Bosnian Serb president and Hague indictee Radovan Karadzic in 1994, is accused of the extermination, murder, persecution, and deportation of non-Serbs in north-western Bosnia between April and December 1992.



Stanisic is charged with the murder, torture and cruel treatment of non-Serb civilians, as well as for his failure to prevent or punish crimes committed by his subordinates.



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



On September 16, 1991, the SDS proclaimed a Serb autonomous entity in the Krajina region of north-western Bosnia.



According to the indictment, Zupljanin was a member of the Bosanska Krajina autonomous regions crisis headquarters in Banja Luka.



Hanson prepared an expert report for the prosecution on the formation and functioning of Serb crisis headquarters in Bosnia. She previously testified in the Hague trial of former Bosnian Serb parliamentary speaker Momcilo Krajisnik and in war crimes trials at the Bosnian state court.



In her report, Hanson said that a document titled "Organisation and Activity of Organs of the Serbian People in Bosnia and Hercegovina in Extraordinary Circumstances", adopted by the SDS board on December 19, 1991, represented the basis for the transformation from party organs into state authorities.



For her report, she had use documents on file with the Hague tribunal, from municipal crisis headquarters and from various government bodies, she said.



Asked by the prosecutor, Thomas Hannis, what the role of crisis headquarters was, the witness said it was to organise "the Serbs' defence, a kind of shadow government preparing the establishment of Serb municipal authorities".



“Could you explain how the SDS crisis headquarters were formed?" Hannis asked.



“The December 19 instructions provided two variants, A and B ... Variant A was for Serb-majority municipalities, variant B for those where they were a minority,” she said.



“Was it planned to include the police in variants A and B?” asked the prosecution. The witness said it was.



She said regional crisis headquarters issued instructions on how to implement centralised policies, and that their decisions were binding for local crisis headquarters.



"Crisis headquarters included representatives of SDS, the army, police and other municipal organs," the witness said, adding that crisis headquarters employed "collective decision-making".



“Since April 1992, crisis staffs played a very important role in taking over authority in municipalities throughout Bosnia and Hercegovina," Hanson said.



The witness confirmed the prosecution claims that at the SDS crisis headquarters meetings throughout Bosnia, the status of Muslims was discussed.



“As I wrote in my report, crisis headquarters were fully involved in this issue on the status and organised expelling of Muslims. The crisis headquarters considered this to be their competence, meaning the status of Muslims fell into their jurisdiction," Hanson said.



In cross-examination, defence counsel for Mico Stanisic, Slobodan Cvijetic, criticised Hanson's testimony. He said her report's only aim was to support the prosecution, for which she has been working since 1999, and that she had used sources “selectively and subjectively”.



Counsel also said that, as she was not a lawyer but rather a historian and political analyst, Hanson was not qualified to analyse crisis headquarters.



“What gives you the right to consider yourself an expert in this issue?" Cvijetic asked the witness.



“I read all the documents I could find, written throughout the Bosnian Serb republic, and I don't know if there is anyone else who has read about crisis headquarters in as much detail as I have,” Hanson answered.



“Therefore my expertise comes from years of research I have carried out."



Stanisic surrendered to the Hague tribunal in March 2005, while Zupljanin was in hiding until June that year, when he was arrested in the town of Pancevo just outside the Serbian capital Belgrade.



The trial continues next week.



Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained reporter in Sarajevo.