Conduct of Doboj's Police Under Scrutiny

Velma Šarić

IWPR-trained journalist

Monday, 25 April, 2011

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The Hague tribunal trial of Mico Stanisic and Stojan Zupljanin continued last week with the testimony of Andrija Bjelosevic, who was a former chief of the Security Services Centre, CSB, in Doboj, in northern Bosnia.

Stanisic is charged with the murder, torture and cruel treatment of non-Serb civilians, as well as for his failure to prevent or punish crimes committed by his subordinates. Stanisic states that he was appointed minister in charge of the newly-founded Bosnian Serb interior ministry, MUP, in April 1992 and was also a member of the Bosnian Serb government.

He is facing trial alongside Zupljanin, who became an adviser to the then Bosnian Serb president and Hague indictee Radovan Karadzic in 1994,and is accused of extermination, murder, persecution, and deportation of non-Serbs in north-western Bosnia between April and December 1992.

Both are alleged to have participated in a joint criminal enterprise aimed at the permanent removal of non-Serbs from the territory of an intended Serbian state. They are accused of crimes committed in 20 municipalities throughout Bosnia between April and December 1992, including Doboj.

Questioned by the defence lawyer for Stanisic, Slobodan Zecevic, the witness said that the police in Doboj in 1992 did its best to carry out its work and treat victims of crimes equally. "What happened then by the local political and military authorities, was beyond our control and competence," he said.

Bjelosevic, a defence witness for Stanicic, appeared to support the defence's claim that the crimes committed against Bosniaks and Croats in Doboj in 1992 were investigated by the police without discrimination.

"There was no discrimination on ethnic grounds, either in relation to victims or the alleged perpetrators," Bjelosevic said.

To support this thesis, the defence produced several copies of official police notices, or observations, which were forwarded from the CSB to the municipal prosecutor's office in Doboj. In the majority of the notices produced, the victims were of Croat or Bosniak nationality, whereas the alleged perpetrators were either Serbs or unknown.

During the testimony, the witness would be shown notices by the defence lawyer and asked to confirm their authenticity, authors and purported recipients. The witness would briefly comment on the contents after which the defence for Stanisic would ask for the notices to be included onto the record.

Judge Guy Delvoie asked the witness to explain why these items were "notices and not documents which explicitly raise charges".

"As far as I can remember, in one of the cases where a fire is mentioned in which a person had lost his life, the first information was that it was the consequence of an accident and not of a crime, therefore the first step was to make an official notice and only then to proceed with the official charges.

“In the other cases, to be honest, I can't really remember but I think that the prosecution asked us to find reliable information before we would raise charges, to clarify whether it was an accident or not, but, as I said, I cannot really remember precisely, these events all happened a very long time ago.”

When confronted with a document dated August 24, 1992, the witness confirmed his signature on it and said that he could if necessary, by handwriting, even identify the person who wrote it.

"It's a document which presses criminal charges against an unknown person who had committed a criminal act against Smail Jukic, a person of Muslim nationality. From our side, the case was appropriately recorded and transferred onto the competent authorities, but what happened to it, I don't know," he said.

The witness explained that the situation in Doboj in 1992 was “rather chaotic”.

"There were many military units passing by and going in different directions… For example, one of our dispatches you showed", the witness said referring to an undated document from the CSB shown by the defence lawyer, "says how one military unit had committed crimes….and if you look at the name of those who were [harmed], you'll see names of Serbs and non-Serbs alike, meaning that they were committing those acts in [a] frenzy without taking care about [the identity of] the people [they harmed]. And, plus, we had an influx of refugees. So the situation was rather hard to control."

Stanisic surrendered to the Hague tribunal in March 2005. Zupljanin was in hiding until June that same year, when he was arrested in the town of Pancevo in northern Serbia.

The trial began on September 14, 2009, and continues this week.

Velma Saric is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.