Tolimir Was “Close And Confident” Mladic Ally
Ex-UN military chief said it was discernible from their relationship that “they functioned together, not in a hierarchy”.
Tolimir Was “Close And Confident” Mladic Ally
Ex-UN military chief said it was discernible from their relationship that “they functioned together, not in a hierarchy”.
The trial of Bosnian Serb army, VRS, general Zdravko Tolimir continued this week at the Hague tribunal with the testimony of Rupert Smith, the former commander of the United Nations peacekeeping forces, UNPROFOR, in Bosnia.
Tolimir served as deputy commander for military intelligence and security in the VRS during the war, reporting directly to VRS commander and Hague fugitive Ratko Mladic. He is charged with eight counts, including genocide, extermination, murder, and the forced transfer and deportation of Bosniaks from the Srebrenica and Zepa enclaves in July 1995.
Smith, who retired in 2002, spent 40 years in the British army, serving in roles such as NATO deputy supreme allied commander Europe, Operation Allied Force during the Kosovo war in 1999.
In 1996, Smith - who was the last UNPROFOR commander - told tribunal investigators that Mladic had described Tolimir as his “right hand”.
The witness said this week that it was Mladic himself who used those words, since they were included in his statement “under quotation marks”.
“I had the impression Tolimir was a close and confident ally to Mladic,” he explained, adding that his impression was based on the numerous meetings he had with VRS representatives in his capacity as UNPROFOR commander during 1995. Smith confirmed that Tolimir often attended these meetings.
“They functioned together, not in a hierarchy,” Smith said, adding that this was “discernible from their relationship, their body language, the tone in which they spoke to each other”.
Before he began giving evidence, Smith’s testimony from the 2007 trial of Popovic and others was included onto the record. Of the seven accused in that case, three – Vujadin Popovic, Drago Nikolic and Ljubisa Beara – were subordinate to Tolimir.
In his testimony, Smith briefly repeated some of the elements from that statement, as well as from his testimony in the Karadzic trial given in February 2011.
The witness told the court how, in July 1995, he had negotiated with Tolimir regarding the evacuation of the civilian population from Zepa. He said it seemed to him that “Tolimir was personally in charge of cleansing the enclave, meaning providing buses and ensuring that the civilians boarded them”.
Smith added that he thought Tolimir had played a similar role earlier in Srebrenica, although prosecutor Nelson Thayer told him that Tolimir had not physically been in Srebrenica.
Smith described Tolimir’s function as “fundamental in the command chain”, which meant that “everything that happened after the fall of Srebrenica falls into Tolimir’s domain”.
The witness continued that in early 1995 all parties to the conflict started preparing for a military solution to the war, convinced that they would win it. The Bosnian army was reinforcing and strengthening itself, whereas the VRS was preparing to “press the enclaves of Srebrenica and Zepa” in order to make them easier to control, he said.
This intent was clearly visible from “the Bosnian Serb strategy of preventing supply convoys from reaching the enclaves”, Smith added.
“This was a way to exhaust not just the population, but also to weaken the enemy and any peacekeeping forces in the enclaves,” he continued.
The general said he felt that UNPROFOR was being thus “forced into a situation in which both sides tried to instrumentalise it.
“The Bosnian Serbs used it as a hostage of sorts, through which they could make pressure on the international community, whereas the Bosnian army used it as a shield which would practically turn the peacekeepers into their allies and eventually lead to foreign intervention on their behalf.”
Smith also made several references to the airstrikes made against Bosnian Serb forces during his term as UNPROFOR commander.
“We’ve been hearing a lot about the no-flight zone in the context of the middle east recently,” Thayer said, “but could you please explain how this referred to Bosnia during your mandate as UNPROFOR commander?”
“The no-flight zone over Bosnia was established pretty early in the war, if I remember in 1993, although it can be checked up in documents,” the witness responded. “The idea behind such a decision from the Security Council was to prevent Bosnian Serb air forces from shelling civilians and refugees leaving different places in Bosnia.
“I can’t remember if NATO volunteered to enforce it, or whether they were asked to enforce it, but either way the implementation of the no-flight zone remained with NATO. And what additionally came was the support for the safe areas, or rather for the exclusion zone in which no heavy artillery was permitted.”
In cross-examination, Tolimir insisted that the reason for the airstrikes had been the “lack of willingness of the VRS to bend to UNPROFOR’s requests”.
“We were considered un-cooperative and therefore punished by airstrikes,” he added.
Smith responded that the NATO airstrikes, which started on August 30, 1995, were “a direct consequence and reaction to the attack by the VRS on Markale, a market in the Sarajevo safe area, which… led to the death of a large number of civilians”.
“General Smith, you are not a ballistics expert, so you cannot have determined where the mortar came from,” Tolimir responded, claiming as well that “it had been shown in the trial of Radovan Karadzic that even the first Markale mortar [in February of 1994] had come from a roof”.
The first indictment against Tolimir was presented on February 25, 2005. He was arrested on May 31, 2007. In December 2009, he pleaded not guilty to all counts.
The trial continues next week.
Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained journalist in Sarajevo.
