prijava
THE HAGUE, November 22 (FENA) - A defense witness in the retrial of two wartime Serbian state security officials said three army brigades that fought in Bosnia shared the same ‘Red Beret’ name as Serbia’s state security special ops unit.
Three brigades of the Serb-dominated Yugoslav Army took part in fighting in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1993 and, like the special operations unit of Serbian state security, were known as ‘Red Berets’, a defense witness in the retrial of two top Serbian state security officials in The Hague said on Thursday, BIRN reports.
Jovica Stanišić, the wartime head of the Serbian State Security Service, SDB, and Franko Simatović, the former commander of the SDB’s Special Operations Unit, are charged with participating in a joint criminal enterprise led by then Serbian President Slobodan Milošević to cleanse Croats and Bosniaks from swathes of Croatia and Bosnia to create an ethnically pure Serb state.
The indictment accuses them of organizing the formation of special state security units and other forces to fight in Croatia and Bosnia between 1991 and 1995.
On Thursday, defense witness Dejan Plahuta said he was a contract soldier in the Yugoslav Army from the autumn of 1992 until the autumn of 1994, tasked with watching the border between Serbia and Bosnia on the right bank of the River Drina near Bajina Bašta in western Serbia.
He told the court – the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals, which is trying unfinished cases left over from the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia – that in the winter of 1993, three Yugoslav Army brigades were deployed to eastern Bosnia “to protect the Serb population”, “liberate territory that had been occupied by forces under Bosnian commander Naser Orić and establish a line of defense further away from the border."
Asked by defense lawyer Mihajlo Bakrač whether those brigades had some kind of unified name or title at the time, Plahuta said they did; besides being known as special brigades they were also referred to as ‘Red Berets’ because all special forces within the Yugoslav Army wore red berets.
The Unit for Special Operations, commanded by Simatović, was widely known by the name Red Berets. Plahuta joined the force in 1994 but said Simatović was not his commander.
“Mr. Franko never issued any orders personally to me,” Plahuta said.
“Whether he took part in establishing the unit I do not know. I know when it was established I only knew that Mr. [Milan] Meda Radonjić was appointed deputy commander and that they were looking for someone with experience, a graduate of Military Academy and higher rank who would be appointed commander of the unit and I know that we did not have a commander until August 1996.”
Plahuta said he only saw Simatović on a couple of occasions and that the accused was only in charge of technical surveillance equipment.
Stanišić and Simatović were originally acquitted in 2013 but the decision was overturned on appeal and a retrial ordered. Both pleaded not guilty again when their retrial started in December 2015.
Stanišić has been on provisional release in the Serbian capital, Belgrade, since July 2017 on health grounds.
(FENA) S. R.
