Milosevic Obtains Concessions on Cross Examination of Zvornik Witness

In possibly his best cross examination to date, Slobodan Milosevic gained a number of concessions from protected witness B-161, a Serbian police officer during the war in Bosnia, including: Atrocities B-161 described on direct examination were committed by paramilitaries. When reported to authorities, action was taken to discipline and rein them in. Local authorities invited Arkan and his men to Bjeljina, Bosnia to protect them. He has no knowledge that Serbian authorities were involved. Mladic ordered that rules of war should be followed in all circumstances and that all fighters should be placed under the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS). Both Muslim and Serb civilians fled Zvornik to Serbia to escape what was essentially a civil war. Serbia welcomed tens of thousands of Muslim refugees and treated them equally with Serb refugees. Some ties between the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) and the Bosnian Serb forces occurred before the dissolution of Yugoslavia and were therefore legitimate. Extensive traffic between Serbia and the Republika Srpska during the war was merely a continuation of trade in wheat, logs, fuel and other goods. It was Bosnian Serbs who extorted money from the transporters, not citizens of Serbia.

Despite these concessions, Milosevic was unable to sway B-161 from important parts of his testimony. One part provided concrete examples of Belgrade’s support for the Bosnian Serbs, beginning well before the war broke out in Bosnia. The Vice President of the Bosnian Serb Government, Branko Ostojic, told B-161 he had paid 1,200,000 US$ to the Belgrade Intercontinental Hotel for expenses of the Bosnian Serb leadership (including Karadzic and Krajisnik), for their trips to Belgrade to consult with Yugoslav leaders before the war and for two years after it started. B-161 also learned from leaders of the local Serb Territorial Defense (TO) in Zvornik that they obtained truckloads of weapons from the JNA before and after the war in Bosnia started. Also before the war started, the Federal Security Service decided to assist the Bosnian Serb leadership (a document to this effect was entered into evidence). When war broke out in Zvornik in April 1992, B-161 encountered terrified civilians who told him there was killing going on in the town and villages. He obtained a meeting with Nikola Sainovic to report that civilians were under threat and fleeing in large numbers, expecting him to inform his boss Slobodan Milosevic, then President of Serbia. The witness's assumption that Milosevic, President of Serbia, had power to influence events in Bosnia is telling.

The witness was also present at the headquarters of Bosnian Serb forces and the local Crisis Staff when JNA Colonel Milosevic arrived following the fall of Zvornik. When the Colonel entered, Major Marko Pejic saluted him and reported that Zvornik had been liberated. Pejic was deputy commander of the paramilitary unit known as Arkan’s Tigers. The Colonel returned Pejic’s salute and promoted him to the rank of Lt. Col. When the Accused elicited agreement from the witness that the Colonel lacked authority to do that, B-161 nevertheless responded, “But still he did it.” Later, the witness heard Arkan on a speaker phone when he upped the promotion to full Colonel, a gesture to demonstrate his greater authority. The Trial Chamber has heard testimony from other witnesses about Arkan’s privileged position with the JNA. According to a secretary in Arkan’s office, another witness who testified, Arkan took his orders from the Serbian State Security Service. Though he and his unit were not in the formal chain of command, substantial evidence shows they were operating under orders from Belgrade. B-161's testimony adds support to this conclusion.

Given the atrocities committed by paramilitaries to which witness B-161 testified, Milosevic tried to show that paramilitary forces had no connections with official Belgrade, which diligently punished crimes they committed. One incident involved Captain Dragan, who the witness confronted about using unarmed Bosnian Muslim prisoners as bait to be hunted and killed in his training exercises. Captain Dragan was withdrawn from the region, reportedly under Mladic’s order. Captain Dragan testified earlier that he was ordered out by Jovica Stanisic, head of the Serbian State Security Service (DB). In another incident, the witness learned that members of the Yellow Wasps were responsible for the execution of 700 to 740 Muslim prisoners who were being held for exchange. They were arrested and tried in Serbia, though testimony was unclear about the results of the trial.

None of Arkan’s Tigers, the predominant paramilitary group in the region and the one with closest ties to Belgrade authorities, were ever prosecuted for crimes they committed during the ethnic cleansing of this area of Bosnia, according to B-161. The witness did testify about discipline Arkan himself administered to his troops. After hearing that some Tigers were committing crimes against Muslim staff of the local hospital, witness B-161 reported it to Arkan, who told him, “Shoot all those there,” meaning his Tigers. The witness responded, “It’s your army, not mine. Come and shoot them yourself.” The next day Arkan told him he had sentenced two of his men to death. Given other testimony in the case about Arkan’s involvement in war crimes, it seems likely the men were disciplined not because they committed crimes but because they did so without orders.

After the fall of Zvornik, thousands of the region’s Bosnian Muslims sought refuge in the UN designated safe haven of Srebrenica. In July 1995, it too fell to Serb forces. Potentially one of the most significant pieces of B-161’s testimony concerned his knowledge of the massacre that Serb forces perpetrated there.

In July 1995, while passing through a village in Zvornik, he came upon a group of 50 women and children in front of a school playground. The playground was full of buses and soldiers with their faces painted “in African colors.” The people told him the soldiers were killing people from Srebrenica. Frequent bursts of gunfire punctuated their story.

B-161 immediately went looking for Army commanders or any leaders to whom he could report. All were unavailable because they were “in the field.” He found a lower rank officer, Drago Nikolic, who was cursing, “What are these Serbs like when they refuse to kill and [I] had to do it?” When B-161 asked how he could do such a thing, “he was surprised as if I should know [Ljubisa] Beara [Chief of Security VRS Main Staff,]had ordered it.” Nikolic then told him that Beara had ordered that 6,900 men needed to be killed within five days, from Zvornik southwards towards Bijeljina. [Both Nikolic and Beara, members of the Bosnian Serb Army, have been indicted by the Tribunal for their part in the Srebrenica genocide.]

Milosevic could do nothing to sway the witness from this damning testimony of a plan to carry out a massacre of 6,900 Bosnian Muslim men. At least that number and up to 10,000 are thought to have been killed and buried in mass graves as a result of the Srebrenica massacres. Milosevic was left to fault the witness for not reporting within his own chain of command.

Despite Milosevic’s success in cross examination, significant parts of B-161’s testimony remained unshaken. 1) Bosnian Serb forces received substantial support from Belgrade authorities, including the JNA and Federal Ministry of Interior. 2) The massacre of over 6,900 Muslim men was planned at the highest levels of the VRS. B-161 is only one witness to testify about events in Zvornik and Serbia’s involvement in them. Other witnesses both support his testimony and add substantially to a developing picture of the ethnic cleansing of Northeastern Bosnia, leading ultimately to Srebrenica. While testimony links Milosevic to ethnic cleansing in Bosnia through his control of the JNA (later VJ) and Serbian DB, as well as his concrete support for Bosnian Serb forces, it remains an open question whether he can be linked to the genocide in Srebrenica.