THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, July 1 (Hina) - The trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic continued before the Hague Tribunal on Tuesday with the testimony of a protected prosecution witness from Bosnia-Herzegovina. The witness
known as B-1244, a Bosnian Serb, was an official in a municipality in the north of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He began his testimony on Monday. In response to questions by prosecutor Dermot Groome, B-1244 confirmed that members of the SDB (State Security Service) from Serbia, the so-called Red Berets, had been deployed in his municipality when no significant clashes had taken place there. The witness said that several hundred Croats and Muslims had been detained in inappropriate rooms where they were beaten, sexually abused or maltreated in various other ways. He spoke of a massacre that had occurred in May 1992 when a drunken member of the special forces from Serbia killed 18 prisoners. The w
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, July 1 (Hina) - The trial of former Yugoslav
president Slobodan Milosevic continued before the Hague Tribunal
on Tuesday with the testimony of a protected prosecution witness
from Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The witness known as B-1244, a Bosnian Serb, was an official in a
municipality in the north of Bosnia and Herzegovina. He began his
testimony on Monday.
In response to questions by prosecutor Dermot Groome, B-1244
confirmed that members of the SDB (State Security Service) from
Serbia, the so-called Red Berets, had been deployed in his
municipality when no significant clashes had taken place there.
The witness said that several hundred Croats and Muslims had been
detained in inappropriate rooms where they were beaten, sexually
abused or maltreated in various other ways. He spoke of a massacre
that had occurred in May 1992 when a drunken member of the special
forces from Serbia killed 18 prisoners.
The witness said that he had travelled to Belgrade at the end of
April 1992 to meet Franko Simatovic aka Frenki, assistant chief of
the Serbian SDB, and that he had also met SDB chief Jovica
Stanisic.
However, during the cross-examination the accused Milosevic
managed to get everything he wanted from the witness. All his
questions were directed at proving that Serbia had had nothing to do
with what had been going on in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
The witness confirmed to Milosevic that the Red Berets deployed in
his municipality had not been members of the Serbian MUP (Ministry
of the Interior) but volunteers of the Serbian Radical Party.
Milosevic obtained an answer from the witness that he had met
Simatovic and Stanisic "by sheer accident".
The witness supported Milosevic's assertion that the declaration
of "the Serbian municipality" had been preceded by "growing
Croatian nationalism and Islamic fundamentalism", and that there
had been no organised expulsions of Croats and Muslims from that
place.
The trial of Slobodan Milosevic, accused of genocide in Bosnia-
Herzegovina and crimes against humanity in Croatia and Kosovo, will
continue on Wednesday.
(hina) vm sb