THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, April 29 (Hina) - Protected witness registered as C-48 testified on Tuesday in the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic before the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague about the order-issuing
relations of Serbian authorities towards the leaders of rebel Serbs in Croatia. He explained how the rebel Serbs had received arms and channels via which heroin had been smuggled into Croatia by the Serbian State Security Service (SDB).
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, April 29 (Hina) - Protected witness registered as
C-48 testified on Tuesday in the trial of former Yugoslav president
Slobodan Milosevic before the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague
about the order-issuing relations of Serbian authorities towards
the leaders of rebel Serbs in Croatia. He explained how the rebel
Serbs had received arms and channels via which heroin had been
smuggled into Croatia by the Serbian State Security Service (SDB).
#L#
From 1992 until 2000 the witness was an associate of the Serbian
interior ministry's SDB in Novi Sad. He was close to Milosevic's
associates who led the Serb rebellion in eastern Slavonia.
Cross-examining the witness, Milosevic tried to discredit the
witness and the credibility of his testimony.
During the cross-examination, it was revealed that the witness's
father was a Serb and mother a Croat, and that he had Croatian
citizenship since 1998.
Milosevic contested C-48's moral credibility with the fact that he
had spied on his Croat friends, a Petrovaradin parish priest, Marko
Kljajic, and reporter Robert Coban, both suspected of cooperating
with the Croatian secret service.
Milosevic especially insisted that the witness spoke about his
knowledge of criminals who had been contract killers for the SDB.
Even without Milosevic's innuendoes, the witness confirmed that he
feared that his former colleagues would kill him because he was
testifying before the tribunal.
Asked by Milosevic to explain why he had not mentioned in his
deposition that the SDB had in the 1990s smuggled large amounts of
heroin into Croatia, the witness said that he had informed the
tribunal's investigators about that only after he had left Serbia,
for fear of being killed.
The witness said that a Darko Asanin had organised the distribution
of heroin in Croatia, through Orasje and under orders of SDB head
Jovica Stanisic.
"In Croatia, the organiser was Zeljko Sobot, who was later killed in
a showdown between Serb and Albanian mobsters in Zagreb," C-48
said.
The witness confirmed his knowledge of the methods of work of
Yugoslav and Serbian secret services by explaining the roles of a
former Yugoslav interior minister, Stane Dolanc, and the chief of
the federal security service, Zdravko Mustac, in decision-making
about the liquidation of political emigrants in Europe.
C-48 also spoke about how the SDB had used a casino in which he had
worked, and in which prostitutes had offered their services so the
SDB could have a hold over some influential people.
The witness cited the example of Miodrag Mile Isakov, the current
Serbian vice-premier, who had gambled with and lost the entire
amount of a donation by the Soros Foundation intended for the
Serbian Journalists' Society, of which he had been president at the
time.
In reply to Milosevic's now regular question about whether he had
ever heard from any official about the plan to create a Greater
Serbia, the witness said among other things he had heard Milosevic
himself in March 1993 mentioning the creation of a unified state
comprising Serbia, the Bosnian Serb entity, the occupied Croatian
region of Krajina (at the time) and Montenegro.
After withdrawing its headquarters from eastern Slavonia in 1996,
the SDB "secured the functioning of its operative network by
infiltrating into the U.N. administration, police and other
services, as well as through hotel clerks, waiters and taxi
drivers," said the witness.
The trial continues on Thursday due to tomorrow's national holiday
in the Netherlands.
(hina) lml sb