prijava
THE HAGUE, July 10 (FENA) - A former member of the Red Berets unit told the Hague trial of Serbian security officials Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović that the two men personally commanded fighters involved in a wartime operation in western Bosnia.
Former Red Berets fighter Dejan Slišković told at the retrial of Jovica Stanišić and Franko Simatović at the Mechanism for International Tribunals in The Hague on Tuesday that the defendants commanded the forces of the Serbian State Security Service, SDB, which participated in the ‘Pauk’ (‘Spider’) operation in western Bosnia in 1994 and 1995, BIRN reports.
Testifying as a prosecution witness, Slišković said Stanišić and Simatović commanded the operation, which was conducted in Cazinska Krajina in western Bosnia.
The security officials ran the operation from a command post in the village of Magarčevac in the wartime self-proclaimed Serb-led Republic of Serbian Krajina rebel statelet in Croatia, he alleged.
The witness said he was a member of the security team at the command building and pointed out what he said were Stanišić’s and Simatović’s offices on a photograph.
He said it was “the first time I have seen Stanišić in uniform”.
In Stanišić’s office, he said he saw “a map showing 30 command posts which Stanišić had set up in western Bosnia”.
Slišković also said that visitors for meetings with Stanišić and Simatović included Milan Martic, the president of the Republic of Serbian Krajina, Ratko Mladic, the commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, Mladic’s deputy Manojlo Milovanovic, and Milorad Ulemek, alias Legija, then a senior officer with the Serbian Voluntary Guard paramilitary group commanded by Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan.
All these forces fought against the Fifth Corps of the Bosnian Army during the Pauk operation, said the witness, who participated in the operation as a member of the Anti-Terrorist Action Unit of the Serbian SDB.
Stanišić, the former chief of the Serbian SDB, and his former assistant Simatović are charged with having been protagonists in a joint criminal enterprise led by then Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, aimed at permanently and forcibly removing Bosniaks and Croats from large parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to achieve Serb domination.
Although the indictment does not charge Stanišić and Simatović with crimes committed in the Pauk operation, the prosecutors are presenting evidence about the operation in an attempt to show the defendants’ pattern of behavior as protagonists in the joint criminal enterprise.
Stanišić and Simatović are charged with persecution, murders and deportations in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which, according to the charges were committed by members of the Red Berets and other units controlled by the Serbian SDB.
Both pleaded not guilty in December 2015 after the appeals chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia overturned their acquittal in their first trial.
The appeals chamber ruled that there were serious legal and factual errors when Stanišić and Simatović were initially acquitted of war crimes in 2013, and ordered the case to be retried and all the evidence and witnesses reheard in full by new judges.
The trial continues on Wednesday.
(FENA) S. R.
