Red Berets Massacre 12 Muslims at Trnovo, Survivor Testifies

Arkan brought his Serbian Volunteer Guard to the rescue in Northwestern Bosnia, after the Bosnian Army's 5th Corps broke through Serbian lines and forced the Bosnian Serb Army (VRS) to withdraw. So testified protected witness B-1047. At the time, he was already a virtual prisoner in his village, forced into work details at the front and around the village by the occupying VRS.

He first came into contact with Arkan and his soldiers in September of 1995, when he was on work detail at the VRS camp at Poljak. One of Arkan's men appeared and asked the VRS soldiers for a vehicle and some men to move weapons and ammunition from a warehouse. C-1047 was selected. After loading the weapons, the men were taken to Arkan's headquarters at the Hotel Sanus, where they had to wait to unload them until Arkan returned from the field.

On his arrival, Arkan released theVRS officer, then proceeded to individually interrogate each of the Bosniak men inside the hotel. The men were forced to sit cross-legged with their heads bowed 'likeTurks' for 5 or 6 hours, until they were wanted for another task -- unloading a truck of books and archives belonging to the Bosniak Party of Democratic Action (SDA). While he was in the hotel, B-1047 witnessed an old Bosniak shaving the heads of soldiers, who were then returned to the front lines. The witness said he concluded they were deserters, perhaps some of the VRS soldiers who'd fled in the face of the 5th Corps assault. He also witnessed Arkan, on learning that the Mayor of Sanski Most had told a soldier he could go on holiday, send for the Mayor. Arkan berated the Mayor for letting a soldier go when the situation was so difficult for the Serbs, and Arkan had sent his own son to the front. The subject of the tirade found his holiday canceled and himself at the front.

Following the unloading of the archives, B-1047 and the 11 men with him were handcuffed in pairs, put on a tarpaulin-covered truck with three of Arkan's soldiers and driven to an unknown location, which he later learned was Trnovo. There, they were taken from the truck in pairs. After the first two left, he heard two gunshots. Then the two men were returned. After the second two were taken, he heard two more gunshots, but the men were not returned. Then it was his turn. He and his partner were marched to a garage. When B-1047 asked if there was anyway they could be allowed to live, one soldier said if they paid 5000 Deutschmarks (DM) each, they would drive the men home. The witness's partner said he only had 200 DM. The soldier swore at him, then pushed them towards a little room in the garage. When the soldier turned his flashlight on the room, B-1047 saw bodies lying in pools of blood. As soon as he walked inside the little room, he was hit near the collarbone with a bullet and fell to the floor.

The killings proceeded two by two until all 12 men had been shot. B-1047 was shot two more times, once in the leg when a soldier aimed at a man who fell down before being shot and once on the chin when a soldier shot everyone in the head to make sure they were dead. He waited until the truck drove off before calling out to see if anyone else remained alive. When no one answered on the third call, he made his way out, eventually escaping back to the VRS forces in Poljak. There, he told a Serb friend what happened, and his friend succeeded in getting him transported to a hospital in Banja Luka, where he remained for 10 days, eventually making his way to Muslim occupied territory. The other VRS soldiers were told he was wounded on work detail at the front. B-1047 remains 60% permanently disabled.

Milosevic focused his cross examination on trying to show that B-1047 was free to leave his village, but since he remained, the Civil Defense ordered him to perform work just as it did his Serb neighbors. B-1047 pointed out that, though he could walk around in his village, it was surrounded by Serb forces, and his Serb neighbors were allowed to continue working in their regular jobs or to join the army, neither of which Muslim citizens were allowed to do.

The Accused also elicited the witness's agreement that he had been helped by local Serbs. But he did nothing to undermine the most damning part of B-1047's testimony -- that Arkan was the ultimate authority in the area, commanding both local civilian and military authorities, and that his men massacred 12 Muslims. As B-1047 showed, Arkan's soldiers did nothing without his orders.

The Prosecution has produced substantial evidence that Arkan's Serbian Volunteer Guard, more commonly called the Red Berets, were part of the Serbian State Security Service. They answered to Franko Simatovic and his boss, Jovica Stanisic. As Dr. Budimir Babovic testified just before B-1047, the Serbian MUP and its DB were de jure (by law) controlled by the President of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic.

The case the Prosecution has been building brick by brick is taking shape. It looks a lot more like a man with a plan than a neighborly Serb providing a little help here and there to his cousin Serbs across the border.