Halilovic

Monday, 5 December, 2005

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Merdijana Sadović

Senior Project Manager

At the close of the trial of former top Bosnian army commander Sefer Halilovic this week, the prosecution called for the defendant to be imprisoned for ten years, while the defence asked for an acquittal.

Halilovic, described by the prosecution as a vain officer whose lack of judgment resulted in the deaths of innocent civilians, has been charged with a single count of violations of the laws or customs of war in connection with the killings of 62 Bosnian Croats in the villages of Grabovica and Uzdol in September 1993.

The crimes occurred while Halilovic was a chief of staff of the Bosnian army, running a military operation dubbed Neretva 93, aimed at relieving a blockade of the city of Mostar.

The defence maintains that Halilovic didn’t have effective control over the troops who committed the killings and that, due to his “very limited powers” at the time relevant to the indictment, he cannot be held responsible.

The trial - one of the shortest at the tribunal so far - started on January 31 this year. This week was reserved for prosecution and defence to present their closing arguments.

Prosecutors told the judges on August 30 that Halilovic’s responsibility for these crimes “was proven beyond reasonable doubt” and that the evidence heard in court supported all their main arguments.

They claim that Halilovic, as the highest ranking officer on the ground, had both de jure and de facto command over the troops deployed in Hercegovina, yet failed to prevent the crimes against Croat civilians in Grabovica and Uzdol, or punish the perpetrators afterwards.

Prosecutors focused in particular on the killings of 33 Croat civilians in Grabovica, which took place on September 8 and 9, 1993.

The indictment against Halilovic alleges that he personally picked units from Sarajevo notorious for their criminal behaviour and that he ordered they be stationed in Croat homes in Grabovica, ignoring the potential danger that these soldiers could pose to the local Croat population.

In his closing arguments this week, prosecutor Phillip Weiner described this decision as “a colossal error” and said the accused “did nothing to prevent the crime” that ensued.

“He was more interested in his own glory – he lost his focus and the actions that followed were reckless. As a result, 33 civilians died for nothing.”

But in his response, Halilovic’s defence counsel Peter Morrissey said that although the defendant was aware of the units’ unruly behaviour, “he had no reason to conclude that innocent civilians would be slaughtered by these soldiers”.

Morrissey also defended the decision to have soldiers billeted in Grabovica as “a good one”, because “the village was peaceful” and “it had a long history of hospitality”.

“No one could see the future, no one foresaw the danger,” said Morrissey.

One of the defence’s key arguments is that Halilovic never had de facto control over the troops deployed in the area where the killings took place, and that the prosecution has “failed to prove the opposite”.

The prosecutors disagree.

They used the opportunity to remind the court of some of the testimonies of prosecution witnesses from earlier in the trial, including statements given by several high-ranking Bosnian army officers, all of whom claimed that Halilovic had effective command and control over the troops in Hercegovina.

“Mr Halilovic was issuing orders to very, very senior officers, and those orders were obeyed,” said prosecutor David Re, quoting former commander of the Bosnian army’s 6th corps Salko Gusic, who said in court that “Halilovic was a superior officer and we treated him as such”.

But Morrissey dismissed Gusic’s testimony as self-serving, because the villages of Grabovica and Uzdol were directly in the 6th corps area of responsibility.

“Gusic was trying to shift his own blame to the accused,” said Morrissey.

During the prosecution case, one of the most incriminating testimonies was heard from notorious former deputy brigade commander Ramiz Delalic, who appeared in court in May and supported all the main prosecution arguments.

Delalic, who is currently under investigation for his own role in the Grabovica massacre, told the tribunal that Halilovic not only tried to conceal a massacre committed by his troops, but also ignored orders from his superiors to investigate the incident.

Commenting on Delalic’s testimony, Morrissey didn’t mince his words.

“He is not a reliable witness. We say he is a criminal, a bad one, a manipulator who told lies about his own involvement in the crime,” he said.

As for the September 14 massacre in Uzdol, in which 29 Croat civilians were murdered, the prosecutors reiterated what they said in the indictment – that these people were killed “in cold blood”, most of them in their homes.

Prosecutor Phillip Weiner described the defence allegations that the victims died as a result of shelling and combat activities in their village as “a fraud”. To support this argument, he again played in court a video with disturbing images of dead children and people wearing civilian clothes, most of them without shoes, which suggests they were inside when they were killed.

This video --in which “no evidence of shelling can be seen”, as Weiner said - was shot by a BBC television crew a day after the massacre occurred and it is one of key pieces of prosecution evidence in their case against Halilovic. It was shown during the prosecution opening statement in January this year, and again when BBC correspondent Kate Adie testified last spring.

The trial chamber is expected to issue a judgment by November this year. They still have to rule on a recent defence motion seeking provisional release for Halilovic until the judgment is delivered. Prosecutors have already opposed his release, arguing that it is at this stage of the proceedings that suspects are most likely to escape.

Merdijana Sadovic is an IWPR reporter in Sarajevo.