Witness Speaks of Krajina Village Deaths
He says there were no Croatian military operations in Grubori on day Serb residents said to have been killed.
Witness Speaks of Krajina Village Deaths
He says there were no Croatian military operations in Grubori on day Serb residents said to have been killed.
A former member of a Croatian special forces unit told the Hague tribunal last week that he saw no evidence of conflict in the Croatian village of Grubori on the day six elderly Serb inhabitants are alleged to have been murdered.
He was giving evidence in the case of former Croatian special police forces commander Mladen Markac, who is accused, along with generals Ante Gotovina and Ivan Cermak, of participating in a joint criminal enterprise to drive the ethnic Serb population from the Krajina region of Croatia in 1995. During Operation Storm in August 1995, Croatian forces recaptured Krajina, which had been held by rebel Serbs since 1991.
According to the indictment against the defendants, Gotovina was the overall operational commander of the offensive in the southern portion of the Krajina region, while Markac was in charge of special police units, and Cermak headed the Knin garrison.
The witness, Branko Balunovic, a former officer of the special anti-terrorist unit of Croatian police, was invited to testify by Presiding Judge Alphons Orie and the trial chamber.
According to the indictment, on August 25, 1995, Croatian forces from the Knin garrison murdered six elderly Serb civilians who had stayed in Grubori after Operation Storm.
"At one moment, somebody from command informed me by radio that there were problems in the village, and as I was in the area, securing the area around the village, I stopped on site to take a look," Balunovic said.
Balunovic said that when he visited Grubori on August 25, 1995, there were no military operations or confrontations in the village and its surroundings and he could hear only "sporadic shooting and explosions". He said this was "quite usual at the time".
He said his group only found two elderly civilians in the village.
"What weaponry did your group or unit use that day?" Judge Orie asked.
"We had hand weapons, ie pistols and other personal weapons, and some unit members probably also had hand grenades. I am not sure but I believe that one of them may have had a hand-held rocket thrower known as 'zolja'," the witness answered.
He stressed he did not notice anything unusual at the village or around it and did not see fire or smoke on the day elderly Serbs were alleged to have been murdered.
Balunovic said that two days later on August 27, 1995, he and other officers of the special police force were ordered by their command to return to Grubori.
"Were you told why you had to go to Grubori?" Judge Orie asked. "I can't recall if we were told why we had to go back but I remember we were told that there were some problems and that we had to go back because of that. I didn't know what this could be."
He said that at Grubori, besides himself, were his superior officers Josip Celic and Zeljko Sacic, and the group had discovered dead people and animals and houses that had been burned.
"I remember a number of dead animals, I think pigs and possibly cows, were in the village. I am not sure about the cows, but I remember the pigs," he said.
"We were greeted by an older man, I think he was a local, and I recall someone saying something along the lines of 'poor pigs', whereupon he answered 'poor people, not poor pigs', and took us from site to site where corpses of dead people were lying.
"At one house, there was a dead man.. murdered, with a wound on his neck, an elderly woman was crying for him and showed us the place where he was slaughtered.
“She was pointing to his wound and then Mr Sacic determined that it did not come from a knife, but rather from a bullet which had entered him sideways. I remember someone took a photograph of it.
"I saw the dead old man, then another corpse at a burnt house. The corpse was burnt too. In another house, there was another body lying. I didn't want to go into any more homes, but I saw from a certain distance, two more bodies in a meadow. Therefore, I saw a total of four bodies."
The witness said he was directed by his superiors to report that the victims were killed during conflict.
He said it was Celic who "gave him orders from Mr Sacic", who was the deputy commander to Markac, and told him to write a report on the action in Grubori.
He said his report said that Croatian special units had fought Serb soldiers left behind in Grubori, which led to civilian casualties in cross-fire. The report also said that special forces had imprisoned two enemy soldiers and Balunovic testified this week that that was put in in order to make the story more credible.
"I think Mr Celic added a part on how he briefed us, before we went to action, on how to treat civilians, ie he told us that we were obliged to respect international law."
The accused, Gotovina, Cermak and Markac, all pleaded not guilty on December 5, 2006. The trial began on March 11, 2008.
Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained reporter in Sarajevo.
