Court Told Tolimir Challenged Mladic

Friday, 20 May, 2011

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Rachel Irwin

Senior Reporter

The former chief of staff of the Bosnian Serb army, VRS, testified at the Hague tribunal this week that defendant Zdravko Tolimir was not afraid to criticise military commander Ratko Mladic, who remains wanted by the Hague tribunal.

On one occasion, Mladic read out a letter he planned to send to the commander of the United Nations forces in Bosnia, said prosecution witness Manojlo Milovanovic, VRS deputy commander during the Bosnian war.

The letter was “rather arrogant and like an ultimatum”, Milovanovic said. Because of this, Tolimir and another commander “were making comments saying, ‘Why didn’t you phrase it like this or that?’”

“As I was listening, I was getting more and more agitated,” recalled Milovanovic, who said he told the others to give advice on how to draft the letter, instead of just focusing on what was wrong with it.

“ What I’m trying to say is that…Tolimir… had the courage to criticise Mladic,” Milovanovic said. “Mladic, though he was the commander, viewed things democratically and would listen to proposals by others. We in the main staff knew that Mladic trusted Tolimir a lot.”

Tolimir, who represents himself in court, was deputy commander for military intelligence and security in the VRS main staff during the war, reporting directly to 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. Some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were murdered at various execution sites in the days following the fall of Srebrenica.

Milovanovic said that Tolimir’s main job was to “gather information about the enemy and prevent any leaks of information”.

Tolimir also had a “feel for diplomacy” and would often be the liaison between the VRS and the UN protection force, known as UNPROFOR.

In addition, Tolimir “wrote down everything”.

“I don’t think I would be exaggerating if I told you that he had a notebook even at lunchtime,” Milovanovic said. “We would tease him…but he would say, ‘It’s for posterity. It’s for history’s sake.’”

“Did his job of preventing leaks extend to the international community and public media?” prosecuting lawyer Peter McCloskey asked.

“I couldn’t know what it was he was doing vis a vis the international community,” Milovanovic responded. “He was in charge of preventing any leaks, including anyone who wasn’t supposed to know. That is what the prevention of leaks means… If the enemy was not supposed to receive a certain piece of information, then that meant that foreigners [should] not receive it either.”

The witness also described the complicated dynamics that often reigned within the VRS, as well as between the military and the political leadership.

For example, Milovanovic said there were always “sparks” between himself and Mladic.

“After six months, [Mladic] explained that he asked for me to be his deputy because ‘I ignite in first gear and you ignite in third gear and best driving is in second gear,’” the witness recalled. “Mladic felt these two temperaments would work well together and balance each other out.”

Mladic “was a commander by nature” who “protected his subordinates”, the witness said.

“During the war, he would not reach rash decisions, and would not reach decisions without having consulted the main staff,” Milovanovic continued.

This changed, he went on, somewhat in mid 1994, when Mladic “did reach a few decisions on his own, mostly because he wanted to achieve something quickly [and] successfully, but very often this didn’t work”.

When it came to Mladic’s relationship with ex-Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic, who is currently standing trial at the tribunal, the witness said that any conflicts had to do with who would be “first man”.

“Both of them were very charismatic, [and] both had great hunger for power,” Milovanovic said.

While they did have “problems understanding each other…Mladic was duty bound because of the structure of the army to carry out the government’s decisions”, Milovanovic continued.

As for Karadzic, the witness said that by early 1995, he was “well versed in his role of supreme commander”.

“At the outset [of the war in 1992], it wasn’t clear to him that he couldn’t issue orders directly to me, or the corps commander, and that all orders had to go through Mladic and down through the subordinates,” Milovanovic said. “These were initial mistakes. By 1995, he no longer made such mistakes unless he intended to do so.”

Karadzic also had “a circle of stable military advisors around him who made proposals to him at a strategic level,” the witness continued. “Unfortunately none of the advisors were trained and educated as well as main staff [of the army].”

As a result, “they frequently suggested to Karadzic things that did not play out in military terms, there was no military logic”, he said.

When it was Tolimir’s turn to cross examine the witness, judges had to repeatedly remind the accused to ask specific questions that were “relevant” to his indictment. They also asked Milovanovic to keep his answers focused after he spent ten minutes responding to a single inquiry.

In response to questions from Tolimir, the witness said that UN forces “failed to disarm the Muslims in Srebrenica and Zepa” after those enclaves became designated safe areas in 1993.

“The Muslims used the safe areas as areas from which surprise operations [could be] carried out against the [Bosnian Serb army],” Milovanovic said.

“Was [the Bosnian Serb army] forced to repel such attacks coming from the enclaves towards the areas outside of enclaves?” Tolimir asked. “Was that legitimate military action?”

“When Muslim forces began incursions into [Bosnian Serb] territory from Srebrenica ...we were then entitled to pursue the enemy to [their] complete elimination so [they would] cease to be a threat to us.”

The trial continues next week.

Rachel Irwin is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.