Witness Says Serbian Security had Mandate to be in Croatia
Former Serbian secret service officer discusses agency’s structure during conflict in Croatia.
Witness Says Serbian Security had Mandate to be in Croatia
Former Serbian secret service officer discusses agency’s structure during conflict in Croatia.
A witness for the defence of two former officers in Serbia’s State Security service said this week that the agency’s presence in Croatia at the start of the war there might have been intended to “protect Serbia’s interests” and safeguard Serbs in the breakaway Krajina region.
Milan Milosevic, a professor at the Serbian police academy in Belgrade, and an officer in the State Security, DB, agency until 1996, appeared as an expert witness in the trial of former DB chief Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, who commanded a DB special forces unit known as JSO or the Red Berets.
The indictment against Simatovic and Stanisic accuses them of setting up a training centre near Knin, Croatia, in April 1991, through which they “organised, supplied and financed” Serb paramilitary and other volunteer groups which subsequently abused and killed scores of non-Serb civilians.
The two defendants allegedly set up additional training centres in Serb-held areas of both Croatia and Bosnia, which were also funded and supported by the Serbian DB.
They stand accused of participating in a joint criminal enterprise intended to forcibly and permanently remove non-Serbs from large areas of Croatia and Bosnia through persecution, murder and deportation.
Milan Milosevic – no relation of Serbia's former president Slobodan Milosevic – prepared a report for the trial on the state security systems of Serbia and the former Yugoslavia.
He told the court that as a serving DB officer until 1996, he was "well acquainted with the work and functioning of Stanisic and Simatovic", although he was not a friend or acquaintance of either man.
His own work at the time, he said, was in "educational and training activities” rather than intelligence.
Milosevic told the court that the DB was "a well-integrated, professional, subordinated part of the MUP [Ministry of Internal Affairs] in Serbia, and its chief was fully responsible to the minister and the entire government".
He said that in line with statutory documents and internal guidelines, such as a 1992 rulebook, the DB was tasked with contributing to “the preservation of the national and cultural identity” of Serbs living outside Serbia.
"Therefore, it was a task for the DB to collect data in Krajina to protect Serbia's interests and safeguard the Serbs in Krajina,” he said.
When Simatovic's defence lawyer Mihajlo Bakrac suggested that Simatovic was in Krajina “merely to fulfill this task and not for any other reason,” the witness said that "this could be very well possible from the background of the documents” he had analysed.
There was, the witness added, a "sufficient statutory and constitutional basis for the activities of the DB and of the accused outside of Serbia".
Questioning the witness, Stanisic’s defence lawyer Wayne Jordash suggested that the DB was subjected to "self-control and also external control through a variety of civilian authorities", a statement the witness agreed with.
Milosevic said provision had been made to set up a parliamentary commission to supervise the DB's actions, but he said he could not recall that such a commission ever existed, nor had he been able to trace any information on it.
Jordash went on to suggest that certain kinds of information might "not have reached the chief [of the DB], and would stay in the lower ranks, if it was not of importance for the strategic interests of Serbian defence – even if it had information on horrible war crimes".
The witness agreed, saying it was possible that reports might not have reached the DB’s director.
During cross-examination, prosecuting lawyer Maxine Marcus suggested that the witness did not have any specific knowledge of the activities of the accused, and that he had based his conclusions on a theoretical analysis of documents. The witness said he "generally agreed" with this.
Marcus said documents existed, signed by Stanisic, “sending Simatovic to Kosovo" at a point when Simatovic was actually in Krajina. This indicated that “his activities were intentionally being covered up”, she said.
She also cited a document dated June 16, 1991, "which had been signed by Simatovic, ordering the transfer of weapons from Serbia to a training centre at Golubic, near Knin" in Krajina.
The witness said he doubted the authenticity of this document “because of the entirely wrong letterhead used on it", as well as the whether it was within Simatovic’s "competence… to issue such a document at all".
The witness said Simatovic "held merely the rank of a senior inspector in the Second Directorate of the DB", a "lower-ranked position", and was therefore "not in position to make any decisions with such grave consequences".
Marcus said there were payroll lists showing that members of paramilitary units such as the Serb Voluntary Guard of Zeljko Raznatovic, aka Arkan, were being paid out of “the budget attributed to the Special Ops unit within the DB” – the unit Simatovic commanded.
The witness replied that he had no idea who was a member of which unit and that he “didn't pay much attention to this question".
"In fact", he continued, "internal documentation… showed that the Special Ops unit which Simatovic was supposedly commander of was only created in 1993 and had no officially named commander until 1996".
It could therefore be disputed that "Simatovic was its commander at all", he said.
Marcus countered this by saying that Simatovic's name and initials appeared on dozens of documents relating to the JSO/Red Berets unit.
Presiding Judge Alphons Orie said he found it strange that the unit should have no commander for three years.
The witness responded that "it was not strange at all", since it simply meant that no commander had been officially named because "a personnel solution could not be found."
He could not explain, however, why "Simatovic's signature appeared so often on documents commanding to or reporting from the unit".
Stanisic and Simatovic were arrested by the authorities in Serbia on June 13, 2003. Both have pleaded not guilty.
Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained reporter in Sarajevo.
