Seselj Questions Credibility of Witness

Ultra-nationalist Serb leader Vojislav Seselj, on trial for war crimes, this week rubbished the testimony of a former supporter because his upkeep is being paid by the Hague tribunal.



“I am questioning the credibility of this witness,” Seselj told the tribunal at the start of his questioning.



Last week, Goran Stoparic, a Serb who took part in the 1991 siege of the Croatian city of Vukovar, told the tribunal how Seselj’s speeches helped persuade him to fight the Croats.



He said he signed up as a Serbian Radical Party volunteer in the autumn of 1991.



Seselj, whose party deputy Tomislav Nikolic won the first round of Serbian presidential elections at the weekend, is charged by the Hague tribunal with war crimes and crimes against humanity. The indictment against him includes acts of persecution, extermination, murder and torture in Croatia, Bosnia and northern Serbia between 1991 and 1993.



Stoparic told the court that at the completion of his service for Serbia’s armed forces in 1999, he was classified as a war invalid. As such, he received an allowance of 50 euro per month - which he called a “pretty bad” sum - from the interior ministry.



However, when he came under the tribunal’s witness relocation programme in 2004, his monthly allowance increased to around 900 euro a month, Stoparic told the court.



Seselj then tried to discredit the witness’s evidence, arguing that it came from someone who had been enjoying a comfortable existence at the expense of the Hague tribunal.



Seselj then questioned an extract from the witness’s statement in which he mentioned a political rally where Seselj had “addressed the crowd like Hitler”.



The witness replied that he would “never ever say that about a Serb, that he resembled Hitler in any way”.



Seselj concluded that the witness was “not focused” when he read statements prepared for him by the prosecution.



“Were there therefore other omissions in the statement and things that found their way into it?” Seselj asked the witness.



“There is that possibility,” replied Stoparic.



Seselj then sought to cast doubt on the prosecution’s assertion that the witness had heard him speak in the town of Shid before signing up as a volunteer in September 1991.



This was impossible, he said, as the Serbian Radical Party was only established on November 15, 1991, and its first rally at Shid was not held until May 15 1992.



When questioned about this, Stoparic said, “I really don’t know the exact date and perhaps I gave a tentative one.”



He added that he had could have heard Seselj on television before going to war.



The indictment against Seselj accuses him of making “inflammatory speeches in the media, during public events and during visits to the volunteer units and other Serb forces in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, instigating those forces to commit crimes”.



The witness then went on to declare himself a loyal follower of the Serbian Radical Party leader.



“I consider that had fate made you president, had that been the destiny, things might have looked very different,” he said.



Seselj continued to try to elicit further positive comments from Stoparic that would contradict his statements.



When questioned about his statement that he had been inspired by Seselj’s speeches and “made a mad step” to participate in the war, Stoparic told the court that he actually had no regrets about fighting for Serbia.



“I was never sorry that I did go,” he said.



Seselj then tried to encourage the witness to testify to his good nature as a leader, asking him to confirm that he had said prisoners, women and children at Vukovar should be protected.



“Of course, you never encouraged a lack of discipline, that was not a characteristic of yours,” the witness responded.



On further questioning by the presiding judge, Stoparic could not specifically confirm an instance of Seselj asking for such people to be protected. However, neither could he recall the politician ordering them to be killed.



“I know that I do not remember, at the time he visited Vukovar, that he said ‘If you have some prisoners go out and execute them’. He did not say that,” Stoparic told the tribunal.



“It was not my understanding that [Seselj] was trying to get us to go out and do something evil.”



Pointing to specific crimes, Seselj said that it was not his volunteers who had carried out the Ovcara massacre in 1991, when around 200 Croat prisoners were killed by Serb forces in a military hospital on the night of November 20.



According to the indictment against Seselj, “Serb forces, including volunteers, incited by Seselj, removed Croats and other non-Serbs from Vukovar hospital in the aftermath of the Serb takeover of the city”.



According to the defendant, who cited the evidence of 12 bus drivers, Stoparic’s unit disbanded on November 18, 19 and 20. His volunteers left the area to go back to Serbia by bus.



The witness agreed with Seselj’s observation that “in the space of three days the bulk [of the detachment] left for Serbia”.



Stoparic went on to tell the court that soldiers’ crimes were not investigated and went unpunished.



He referred to an incident in which a man nicknamed Topola who was accused of raping and killing a Croat girl simply walked free.



According to Stoparic, although he and reserve officer Milan Kameni were acting duty officers at the time, because they were not professional officers of the Yugoslav People’s Army, punitive measures were beyond the scope of their responsibility.



“The best [Kameni] could do was to exclude him from the unit and send him away. There was no other practice open to us. We weren’t trained as duty officers as such,” Stoparic told the court.



Seselj then tried to use the witness to show that all sides in the conflict operated with impunity. He asked the witness if he knew of any examples of courts martial or disciplinary executions among the Croats, Muslims or Serbs.



“I know of no example on any side,” Stoparic told the court.



Simon Jennings is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.