Hague Witness: ‘Arkan’s Men’ Killed Bosniaks in Zvornik

Former Serbian state security officials Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic. Photo: BETA/AP.

A protected prosecution witness codenamed RFJ-019 testified at the trial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Thursday that she was told that Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan, led the fighters who killed Bosniak civilians in Zvornik in April 1992.

Stanisic, the former chief of the Serbian State Security Service, and his former assistant Simatovic are on trial for persecution, murders and deportations during the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

According to the charges, the paramilitary Serbian Voluntary Guard, which was commanded by Arkan, was under the control of the Serbian State Security Service.

Witness RFJ-019 said she was hiding together with other Bosniak civilians in the basement of a residential building in Zvornik on April 9, 1992 when she heard an explosion.

After that, some soldiers wearing face masks entered the basement and took the men out, while some other soldiers came for the women and children.

Once they got outside, the witness and the other women were escorted past the men from the basement, who were lined up next to a wall. RFJ-019 said she heard gunshots behind her back a short time later.

The women and children were taken to a local library, where guards “told us they were Seselj’s men and they were good, while those who committed the killings were Arkan’s men”, witness RFJ-019 said.

The witness told the court she saw Arkan at the library before she was taken away.

When she returned to Zvornik a short time later, RFJ-019 said she saw blood at the place where the men from the basement had been lined up. She said she has never seen the men alive again.

The Hague Tribunal charged Arkan with wartime crimes in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, but he was murdered in Belgrade in January 2001 and never appeared in court.

According to the indictment, Stanisic and Simatovic committed their crimes as part of a joint criminal enterprise aimed at forcibly and permanently removing Croats and Bosniaks from large parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, which would then be incorporated into a unified Serb state.

The prosecutors allege that the joint criminal enterprise was led by the former Serbian President Milosevic, while other protagonists included Karadzic and Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic.

The defendants 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 Stanisic and Simatovic 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.