Serb Intelligence Office Quizzed on Srebrenica
Witness testifies in Tolimir trial about his discussions with the accused on military actions in relation to the enclaves.
Serb Intelligence Office Quizzed on Srebrenica
Witness testifies in Tolimir trial about his discussions with the accused on military actions in relation to the enclaves.
The Hague tribunal trial of Zdravko Tolimir continued this week with a testimony by the former chief of military intelligence in the Bosnian Serb Army, VRS, main staff, Petar Salapura on what he knew about the prelude to the fall of the Srebrenica enclave.
Throughout the war, Salapura was in charge of military intelligence affairs for the VRS. His department was part of the Sector for Security and Military Intelligence Affairs headed by Tolimir. He is now a retired VRS colonel.
Tolimir served as deputy commander for security and military intelligence 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.
At the beginning of the trial, and on request of the prosecutor, Presiding Judge Christoph Flügge warned Salapura that he must not answer any questions which would incriminate him. The witness, who appeared for the prosecution, testified among other things on his discussions with Tolimir on military actions in relation to the enclaves.
Salapura and Tolimir "met for the first time in 1969, but only saw each other again 1991", the witness said. "Or maybe it was 1992, there was a training course in Knin for intelligence officers, we met there briefly."
The witness said he had joined "the VRS upon its formation, in May of 1992". He confirmed that Tolimir was his direct superior.
Describing the operation of his department, he said that "the daily work consisted [of] receiving reports from army units, their intelligence officers and the intelligence centre, and then collecting and processing these analytically.
"Tolimir was coordinating the work of both departments [ intelligence and security], directing work and ensuring that things went smoothly.
"He also had responsibility in the military sense, making sure that our work went ok, that the quality and scope of data we processed was sufficient."
When asked by prosecutor Peter McCloskey whether he knew about a document named Directive No 7, Salapura claimed that he had not heard of such a document or any other directive until 2004, when he testified in the trial of Vidoje Blagojevic at the Hague tribunal.
The said directive is a document which orders "planned and well-devised measures for the creation of an unbearable situation of total insecurity without hope for survival [for] the citizens of Srebrenica and Zepa".
The prosecutor then showed him an order from Mladic, dated March 31, 1995, initiating the operation Synergy (Sadejstvo) 1995, and issued on the explicit basis of the directive, but Salapura stayed with his original statement of only having heard of it in 2004.
After the prosecutor implied that he must have known of the directive after seeing the order, Salapura answered that "the directive was only familiar to those who had prepared and drafted it, and I was not one of them".
Asked whether he knew that there were several directives issued during the war ,Salapura said he "didn't know much, I took part in planning two or three of them but do not know whether they were implemented, I know one or two certainly weren't. However, I never took part in the drafting of the wording of these directives".
He was then asked by the prosecutor about the operation on June 24, 1995, when a United Nations peace keeping, UNPROFOR, control point in Zeleni Jadar, a village south of Srebrenica was attacked, which the prosecutor claimed was aimed to meet the aims set forward by the directive.
The witness said that "this operation was supposed to warn the Muslim side to stop carrying out sudden attacks from within the enclave.
"We wanted to pressure UNPROFOR into disarming the safe area and prevent attacks from within it carried out by the [Bosnian army] from within it.
"We had intervened with the UNPROFOR for these attacks to stop, but that yielded no result."
He also stated that in late June, he was not at the main staff of the VRS for health reasons, "An ulcer was troubling me, and I was exhausted, so General Tolimir told me 'Go, take a rest, let a doctor see you in Banja Luka and spend a month relaxing, I'll do my work in the east and you do as much as you can during that time in the west."
He said that he spent most of his time in Banja Luka at home, as per doctor's orders, and would only go to the main staff if "something needed solving".
Salapura confirmed that, in fact, on one occasion he had "remarked that attacks against the enclaves would be counter-productive because they would cause international reaction, and should not be attacked in any case" and that Tolimir agreed and felt "the enclaves were ripe fruit already".
Tolimir was arrested on May 31, 2007 and brought to the Hague to face charges set out in an indictment presented on February 25, 2005. In December 2009, he pleaded not guilty to all counts.
The trial continues next week.
Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained reporter in Sarajevo.
