Court Hears VJ Not Forced to Fight in Bosnia
Witness says Yugoslav troops could opt out of Sarajevo battle.
Court Hears VJ Not Forced to Fight in Bosnia
Witness says Yugoslav troops could opt out of Sarajevo battle.
A defence witness told the Hague tribunal trial of former Yugoslav army, VJ, chief Momcilo Perisic this week that members of the 72 Special Brigade were free to decide whether to take part in fighting on the frontlines around Sarajevo in December 1993.
Zlatko Danilović, a former member of the 72 Special Brigade of the VJ, was giving evidence for the first time in the trial of Perisic, former chief of general staff of the VJ, who has pleaded not guilty at the Hague tribunal to 13 charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity in Bosnia and Croatia.
These include aiding and abetting the 43-month siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica in July 1995.
Perisic's authority, the indictment states, allowed the general to implement decisions of the VJ general staff and its subordinate units, as well as to transfer VJ personnel to the Bosnian Serb army, VRS, and the Serbian Krajina army, SVK, for temporary assignments or indefinite periods.
His indictment alleges that Perisic provided financial, logistical and personnel support to Serb forces in both Croatia and Bosnia between 1991 and 1995, by personally establishing two personnel centres within the VJ to covertly deploy officers to those two breakaway republics and pay their salaries.
At the beginning of his statement, Danilovic confirmed that he had joined the 72 Special Brigade on January 4, 1993, and that he ended his service on October 31 of the following year.
He said he was stationed with his unit at Avala, near Belgrade, and had not once seen nor heard from his colleagues or superiors that General Perisic had come to visit that unit.
Danilovic then said that some 50 soldiers of the 72 Special Brigade were deployed in the municipality of Vogosca near Sarajevo.
According to the indictment, Perisic aided and abetted crimes including unlawful killings, inhumane acts and attacks against the civilian population of Sarajevo, knowing that the aid in logistics and personnel which he supplied would be used in the commission of these crimes.
The indictment states that Perisic had used his authority to deploy VJ unit members as support to the VRS in its siege of Sarajevo during the "Pancir-2" operation from December 1993 to February 1994.
"We were told that anyone who felt incapable or for any other reason couldn't go, didn't have to go and would not bear any consequences. All those who wanted, came along," the witness said.
"We arrived in Vogosca in late December and we were left to settle in a hotel. I don't know what its name was but I know it was in Vogosca and we stayed there for ten days.
“During that time we had neither military activity [against the Bosnian army, ARBiH] nor contact with VRS members.”
The witness said the 72 Special Brigade were involved in action against the ARBiH on December 27 which last two hours. He said his unit suffered casualties – six dead and 10 injured.
The task of the brigade was, according to Danilovic, to occupy the Betanija medical centre in Vogosca, which was under the ARBiH control, as well as the bunkers and trenches around it.
"My group was charged with taking the bunkers and ditches and another one with entering the building. We did our task, yet the other group faced strong resistance. They were let into the building and then attacked with hand grenades. After two hours of fighting we managed to get out of the site, but we did not succeed in taking our dead with us," he said.
The witness said that members of the brigade stayed in the Sarajevo area for two further days and then went back to Serbia. The bodies of the six killed were subsequently returned after 10 or 15 days to Serbia and buried there.
Danilovic said he kept up regular contact with colleagues from his former unit in Serbia, "Every year on December 27, we pay our respects to the killed in the presence of all members of the unit, both present and past."
In cross-examination, the prosecutor, Evangelos Thomas, asked questions related to the way Danilovic's service was ended. The prosecution says he was discharged from the unit in October 1994 on grounds of desertion, whereas the witness said he had left the unit "by agreement with the commander", and that at the time he had received an offer of a job outside the military.
Judge Michèle Picard asked the witness whether VJ soldiers could decide just like that whether they would take part in an action or not, or whether they had to follow their superiors' commands, to which the witness answered, "In this case, the soldiers had the right of choice."
Perisic surrendered to the Hague tribunal on March 7, 2005 and the trial began on October 2, 2008.
The trial continues next week.
Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained reporter in Sarajevo.
