Hamdija Krupic described a rift within the police force in northwestern Bosnian town of Bosanski Novi along ethnic lines, the departure of Muslim and Croat policemen, the forming of a Serb-dominated Ministry of the Interior, the Serb takeover of the area, and the expulsion of tens of thousands of non-Serbs in the spring of 1992.
The witness said that Martic's special police forces known as the Red Berets were involved in the ethnic cleansing of the Bosanski Novi area. They provoked incidents such as bomb attacks and murders, including that of a Serb chief of police who had opposed the extremists.
Krupic said that Martic and Milan Babic, another Croatian Serb leader who recently committed suicide in the ICTY detention centre, had frequently visited Bosanski Novi at the time and that there was an obvious political and financial connection between rebel Serb leaders in Croatia and Bosnia.
Krupic left Bosanski Novi with his family on 8 May 1992. He said that a large-scale expulsion of the non-Serb population from the area began on 15 May and that attacks by Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) troops, Serb volunteers and Martic's men on Muslim and Croat villages left about 50 civilians killed.
Male inhabitants were arrested at their homes and taken to a playing field where they were held for a couple of days. After that a massive evacuation began under the auspices of the UN Protection Force, with 10-12,000 people evacuated in a single day, the witness said.
Asked by Presiding Judge Bakone Justice Moloto of South Africa where those people were now, Krupic said that Bosanski Novi had a pre-war population of 14-17,000 and that fewer than 5,000 remained there.
Milan Martic, former minister of the interior and president of the Republic of the Serb Krajina, the self-proclaimed Serb statelet in Croatia during the war, is charged with war crimes committed in the Serb-occupied areas of Croatia from 1991 to 1995 and crimes against non-Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina.
The trial continues on Monday.