war crimes – Croatia, the War, and the Future

Croatian Court Sentences Serb Paramilitary Commander For War Crimes

September 27, 2017 by inavukic 7 Comments

Dragan Vasiljkovic (R)
Photo: AP

Croatian court in the city of Split has sentenced Tuesday 26 September the former Serb paramilitary commander and Australian citizen, Dragan Vasiljkovic, a.k.a. Captain Dragan, a.k.a. Daniel Snedded, to 15 years in prison for war crimes committed in Croatia during Serb aggression against Croatia in the 1990s.

The sentence is pathetic. If true justice were handed out then the man would spend the rest of his life in prison.

The municipal court in the coastal town of Split said Tuesday found that the rebel Serb paramilitary commander Dragan Vasiljkovic had during the 1991-95 Croatian Homeland war, when Serbs took up arms against Croatia’s secession from communist Yugoslavia, killed, tortured and beaten civilians and Croatian police prisoners in a fortress in Knin prison in 1991 and that his attack that same year on a series of villages near Glina had resulted in the deaths of civilians.

The 63-year-old Vasiljkovic, who was born in Serbia, went to Australia at the age of 15 but returned to the former Yugoslavia to train Serb rebels in 1991, when Serbs took up arms against Croatia’s secession from Yugoslavia.

He spent nine years in detention in Sydney fighting extradition, claiming he would not receive a fair trial after The Australian had exposed his war crimes in a 2005 article. Vasiljkovic was discovered by Australian Federal Police while working on a yacht at the Harwood Slipway in the Clarence Valley (state of New South Wales, Australia) after 43 days on the run. He was then extradited from Australia in July 2015, after fighting a 10-year legal battle against being handed over to Croatia’s judiciary.

He became Australia’s first extradited war crimes suspect.

While praised in Serbia and among Serbs worldwide as disciplined soldier with no mercy, in Croatia he was known as a smug self-promoting commander of a special forces unit, the feared Kninjas, that sought to drive out ethnic Croats from the border area known as Krajina (territory covering about 1/3 of Croatia and occupied by Serbs during the war via ethnic cleansing of Croats and other non-Serbs, murder, rape, plunder and destruction).

The three-judge Croatian court panel found Vasiljkovic guilty of two of the three charges, which included torturing and beating imprisoned Croatian police and army troops and commanding a special forces unit involved in the destruction of Croatian villages. He was found responsible for the death of at least two civilians.
About 60 prosecution witnesses were questioned during the trial, including those who said they were tortured by Vasiljkovic.

The court found that Vasiljkovic, as commander of special Serb purposes unit of the paramilitary forces, for the training of special units known as Alpha, acted against and in breach of Geneva Convention.

When Vasiljkovic strode in the historic old fortress town of Knin in the Dalmatian hinterland near the Bosnian border in early 1991 tensions against secessions from former Yugoslavia reached boiling point from Serbia direction, his connections with Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic’s secret police who sat at the apex of the power structure were already well-established.

The deadly assault at Glina in July 1991 was an early bloody chapter in the genocides committed by Serbs in Croatia. The Glina assault is among the war crimes tribunal’s three allegations against Vasiljkovic, who is accused by Croatian prosecutors of commanding troops who tortured and killed prisoners of war; commanding a deadly assault at Glina in 1991; and training paramilitary units that committed war crimes at Bruska near Benkovac in Croatia’s central Dalmatian hinterland in 1993.

When Croatia declared it wanted independence from Yugoslavia in 1991, Vasiljkovic adopted the moniker Captain Dragan and was encouraged by Serbian intelligence chiefs Milan Martic (sentenced to 35 years prison in The Hague) and Franko Simatovic (currently on retrial for war crimes in The Hague) to train special forces units in an old scout hall in the village of Golubic from where he often led his own unit on military operations.

Vasiljovic’s lawyer Tomislav Filakovic said in Split: “Captain Dragan didn’t expect such a harsh sentence, this has come as a big surprise.
“We don’t believe the prosecution presented substantial evidence to arrive at such a verdict and we will appeal.’’

His lawyers will lodge a request for Vasiljkovic to released immediately because he has served nine years in detention in Australia and a further two years in a jail in Split. Under Croatian law prisoners can be released after serving two-thirds of their original sentence.

Vasiljkovic, who was widely believed during the war to be working for Serbia’s secret service, has claimed innocence throughout the one-year trial, saying the whole process was rigged. The judges ruled that they will take into account the time Vasiljkovic served in detention in Australia and in a Croatian prison, meaning he has three and a half years of his sentence remaining.

As much as Serbia may pursue its denial of direct involvement in the violence and genocide in Croatia (and Bosnia and Herzegovina), which led to the rising of Croatian defence forces against the backdrop of UN arms embargo, strong Yugoslav Peoples’ Army acting for Serbia’s interests, and an impoverished material defence resources Vasiljkovic’s case serves also as a reminder of the horrors Croats went through during the Homeland War. Any lasting reconciliation can only be achieved via truth and justice such as the one seen surfacing in the Split court on Tuesday, even if the sentence is pathetic when compared to the brutality of the crimes. One must not forget that many Serbs known or suspected of war crimes in Croatia had, as part of the deal for peaceful reintegration in Croatia of Eastern Slavonia, Baranja and Western Sirmium, in 1998, been given amnesty from prosecution for war crimes. This is something that is most painful for Croats. However, as there is no statute of limitation for war crimes and a revisit to the matter with view to rescinding the amnesty would no doubt serve the needed justice for victims of war crimes. Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Captain Dragan, Croatia, Daniel Snedden, Dragan Vasiljkovic, genocide, Serb aggression against Croatia, Serb paramilitary forces in Croatia, Slobodan Milosevic, war crimes

ICTY Stanisic and Simatovic Retrial – Serbia’s Involvement On Agenda For War Crimes Against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina

June 18, 2017 by inavukic 1 Comment

Serb war crimes suspects:
Jovica Stanisic (L)
Franko Simatovic (R)

Two former secret police chiefs – Jovica Stanisic, the former head of Serbia’s state security, and Franko Simatovic, his deputy, once held to be among the most powerful men in Serbia, went on trial Tuesday 13 June 2017 at The Hague ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia) for the second time, accused of running a lethal network of covert operations during the 1992-95 conflict in which Serbia wanted to prevent the break-up of Yugoslavia despite the fact that majority of people in states that made up Yugoslavia, except Serbia, voted to secede from communist Yugoslavia.

The ICTY prosecutors hold that the operations were intended to impose as well as conceal the wartime policies of Slobodan Milosevic, the then Serbian president. The policies that with their intent could perhaps be captured in a sentence uttered by Milosevic in 1989: “Either Serbia will be united or there will be no Serbia!” With this non-Serbs across former Yugoslavia began to tremble.

Stanisic and Simatovic were acquitted of similar charges to those in paragraph above in 2013 after a three-year trial at the ICTY in The Hague. The acquittals shocked legal experts, victims’ families and survivors of the wars of Serb aggression in Croatia and in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The wars of Serb aggression in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during early 1990’s meant that special combat units of the Serbian secret police directed Serb paramilitary forces who burned churches and mosques and killed masses and raped civilians in village after village to drive out non-Serbs (Croats and Bosniaks and other non-Serbs). These special combat units often went into action ahead of or alongside Serb military units.

With regards to the 2013 acquittal the ICTY chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz said in an interview: “Take for example, the most recent decisions on Stanisic and Simatovic. That victims cannot be satisfied with this decision is obvious. The judges on one hand have confirmed that Stanisic and Simatovic, as responsible for the Serbian intelligence service in Belgrade during the wartime, were the ones creating those special units (Serb paramilitary groups responsible for atrocities in Bosnia and Croatia), that they were the ones supporting financially those units, and that they de facto also were the ones who had a certain control of those units. To have as a conclusion that they were acquitted because they have not specifically directed their support to a commission of crimes is, of course, a notion very difficult for victims to understand. And even at my office, we considered it as a break from the previous jurisprudence where it was sufficient to prove that somebody who was providing substantial support to a party in the conflict had actual knowledge about the commission of crimes by those groups.”

In late 2015, ICTY appeals judges ruled that they had found legal and factual errors in the first trial.

While the judges in the Trial chamber ruled that the defendants had issued no “specific direction” to commit crimes, the appeals judges said no such proof was required to prove a criminal conspiracy or the aiding and abetting of crimes. Given that two of the three original judges had left the chamber, the case could not be sent back the appeals judges issued a decision that not only overturned what had been established by the Trial Chamber back in 2013, but also ordered that Stanisic and Simatovic be retried.

This was/is particularly good news as there has been a consistent, propaganda calibre of an alarming rise of zeal among Serbian nationalist groups, politicians and other public-figure individuals who are rewriting the history of the conflicts in Croatia and Bosia and Herzegovina, denying that Serbs committed any war crimes, pushing the agenda of Serb victimhood including falsely branding the voluntary withdrawal from Croatia of some 200,000 Serbs after Croatia’s liberating military operation Storm in August 1995 as forced deportations and ethnic cleansing, banning references to the conflict from schoolbooks and glorifying convicted war criminals.

ICTY chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz, the tribunal’s chief prosecutor, told the Security Council on June 7, 2017, that despite the large body of evidence proven in “case after case,” the denials and the refusal to accept facts, even by government officials, were “loud and clear.” (For Full address click here)

“Genocide is denied. Ethnic cleansing is denied,” he said.

“When irresponsible officials use division, discrimination and hate to secure power, conflict and atrocities can gain a logic of their own,” Brammertz said. “That was true two decades ago when genocide and ethnic cleansing began, and it remains true today.”

On the first day of the new trial on Tuesday 13 June 2017, Douglas Stringer, a prosecutor, portrayed the two former Serbia secret police chiefs, Stanisic and Simatovic, as close to Slbodan Milosevic, who had himself gained control of the institutions and agencies of the federal government of what was then Yugoslavia.

Milosevic entrusted the two men with all the critical aspects of secret police activities leading up to and during the wars, Stringer said.

The men set up clandestine training camps for paramilitary fighters and acted as chief organizers, paymasters and suppliers for those units, he said. The paramilitaries, some of whom were convicts, became notorious for their brutality and, according to ICTY prosecutor Stringer, “looted on an industrial scale.”

Far from spontaneous, the prosecutor said, the Serbian state security at first placed their operatives in positions in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia that were scheduled for “ethnic cleansing.” He said these operatives were known as “doublehatters,” at once linked to the Belgrade government and also key players locally who relayed orders to the paramilitaries. All the activities “were covert to conceal the hand of Milosevic,” Stringer said.

The fate of Stanisic and Simatovic will be crucial in legally determining the role of the Serbian state in the wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina that killed more than 130,000 people. After two decades of trials at the tribunal in The Hague, no officials of the Belgrade wartime government are serving sentences, only Bosnians and Croats. Should Stanisic and Simatović be found guilty in the retrial, a connection between the Serbian political cadres and the crimes committed in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina would be established, legally sanctioning the direct involvement of the Serbian state in the 1990’s wars in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Slobodan Milosevic, considered the war’s main architect, was facing a list of charges, including genocide, when he died in a tribunal cell in 2006 shortly before the end of his trial. His chief of staff, Gen. Momcilo Perisic, was convicted and sentenced to 27 years for aiding and abetting war crimes in Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, but the verdict was overturned on appeal in 2013 because no “specific direction” to commit crimes had been proved. That ruling also led to disagreements among legal scholars and judges. ICTY is expected to deliver a verdict for Gen. Ratko Mladic, the former Bosnian Serb military chief, in November 2017. Ina Vukic

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Croatia, ethnic cleansing, former Yugoslavia, Franko Simatovic, ICTY, Jovica Stanisic, Momcilo Perisic, Ratio Mladic, Serb aggression against Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serba Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serge Brammertz, Slobodan Milosevic, war crimes

Accused War Criminal Dragan Vasiljkovic – Callous Manipulator

December 7, 2016 by inavukic 21 Comments

Dragan Vasiljkovic
November 2016
On trial for war crimes in Croatia
Photo: Miranda Cikotic/Pixsell

Cold, callous, focused and well-prepared was Dragan Vasiljkovic, the notorious Serbian Captain Dragan, on Monday 5 December 2016 as he entered the County court in Split Croatia where the criminal trial for charges of war crimes committed in the Croatian areas of Knin, Benkovac and Glina 25 years ago is taking place, writes Slavica Vukovic of Vecernji List. Fighting the Croatian extradition application to Australia for 11 years he was no doubt in a position to prepare his defence to some detail and studied every word in the witness statements presented to Croatia’s public prosecution with frantic fervour. He knows every comma in those statements, and even more than that as he tends to examine the witnesses about matters they had stated to the police or the prosecution but which are not contained in filed versions of their recorded statements. This is the reason why chief judge Damir Romac frequently warns Vasiljkovic to keep to the point or matter being addressed.

Besides being well prepared Vasiljkovic leaves the impression of an intelligent man, a cynic, a manipulator who invests quite a bit of effort in belittling and confusing the witnesses as well as a showman who, despite standing accused of war crimes, enjoys being at the centre of attention. As soon as he appeared before the Croatian court he used the opportunity for an emotional exposé of his beloved homeland Yugoslavia, which, he said, he was only defending.
“The Adriatic Sea was my sea, the same as it is yours today, and some fiends took it away from me. The aggression against Yugoslavia was carried out by domestic traitors and foreign mercenaries such as Jean Michel and thousands of others who came from the white world to carry out an aggression against my Yugoslavia,” Vasiljkovic said, insisting that he was a defender and not an aggressor. When asked to plea he said:
“I absolutely do not feel guilty!”

He shows no emotions as he listens to witness testimonies that describe the horrors they went through. He asks questions to each of them, insisting on details and attempts to devalue their testimonies. He tries to abuse his rights by offering his personal views of the events and so he tried to convince Darko Kruljac, the policeman that gave testimony on the attack on Glina police station, that the Croatian policemen were elite, hit squad, well armed and equipped.

“I’m convinced that I have before me an honourable police colleague. I’ve studied your unit. Do you agree that it was the most elitist one?” Vasiljkovic asked Kruljac and judge Romac promptly warned him to steer away from suggestive questions.

“I just want to relax the atmosphere a little, we don’t all need to be as bitter as Maria. I see the man before me for the first time,” replied Vasiljkovic to the judge, alluding to judge Maria Majic, a member of the panel of judges sitting before him.

Vasiljkovic attempted to devalue policeman Robert Hajdic’s testimony when Hajdic said that he saw three soldiers from 30 meters distance, a detail he omitted to state in his original witness statement fifteen years ago. Hajdic attributed the discrepancy in his statements to stress and then Vasiljkovic asked: “14 years have passed. Are you still under stress even after 14 years?” Vasijkovic received a reply from Hajdic he did not expect: “Because of your deeds and crimes some people suffer stress to this day.” Vasiljkovic found himself speechless.

County Court Split in Croatia
Photo: HINA/ Mario Strmotic/ ua

Osman Vikic is a Croatian policeman. Rebel Serbs captured him in June 1991 in Udbina. During the investigations he said that Vasiljkovic tortured and abused him several times but there, before the court, he said that he saw Vasiljkovic only once, as he arrived in the prison at Knin fortress and when Vasiljkovic asked him to whom he gave reports about the Serbian police in the self-proclaimed Republic of Serbian Krajina (Croatian territory occupied by Serbs). Vikic said that Vasiljkovic hit him.
Vikic said that later on members of the Knindza group, of which Vasiljkovic is exceptionally proud, had beaten him. Vikic said that he especially remembers the Serbian St Vitus Day holiday when the Serb paramilitary units arrived to the Knin prison drunk. “We were bludgeoned so hard that we no longer knew our own names,” said Vikic, explaining that soon after that he was released from prison. He said that two of his ribs and chest bone were broken from the beatings and that he suffered numerous hematoma and pneumonia. “I have a witness statement that says that you betrayed Croatia because you went over to the Serbian Krajina side and so I’m interested to know who is lying: the witness or you?” Vasiljkovic attempted to provoke Vikic but judge Romac swiftly put a stop to that:

“As the accused you may put questions but you cannot interpret witness statements to suit your cause,” said judge Romac to Vasiljkovic.

” I have a remark to make. I have never spoken a single word to this man before. Everything he has said is not the truth to me and, hence, he should be examined with regards to giving false statements,” Vasiljkovic replied to judge Romac.

Vasiljkovic tried to confuse Adam Mrakovic, as well. Adam Mrakovic was commanding officer at TO Glina in 1991. Mrakovic said that he was stripped of his authority and that Vasiljkovic took over the command and coordinated the second attack against Glina police station. “You arrived in a costume uniform, with a beret on your head and with some pistol. I had heard of you, but frankly I need to say, when I saw you I was disappointed,” said Mrakovic.

That agitated Vasiljkovic and he fired questions at Mrakovic: “Did you and I have any contact? Did you have contact with anyone who knew me? When did you discover that there will be an attack against the police station?”

Australia’s and Serbia’s governments’ representatives are present in the court, observing the trial – Vasiljkovic is a citizen of both countries. The president of the Society of prisoners of Serb concentration camps in the Split-Dalmatia region, Ivan Turudic, is also often present in the court during the hearing. “I did not expect that he would express remorse, but I did expect that from the human side he would accept responsibility for what had happened. He is trying to twist all the assumptions, events and wash out the memory. His approach, when he insults with perfidy, when he provokes and belittles the witnesses, victims – that is to say, is truly painful to me from time to time,” said Turudic.

This episode of hearing before the criminal court in Croatia does not surprise nor does Vasiljkovic’s repugnant behaviour – he is an accused war criminal on trial, after all. It does rub salt into the still fresh wounds inflicted 25 years ago when Serbs like Vasiljkovic decided that genocide and ethnic cleansing of Croats was a way to preserve Yugoslavia; stop Croatia from seceding. By 1991 Serbs like Vasiljkovic have purposefully forgotten that Yugoslavia was concocted and patched together with the help of the Allies after WWI for the benefit of and at behest and plan of the Serbian king; without Croatian parliaments’ ratification or peoples’ will. So, Vasiljkovic, you are wrong – the Adriatic Sea is Croatian, not Yugoslav and it has been so forever bar for the few decades when Serbs tried to control and own it. Ina Vukic, Prof. (Zgb); B.A., M.A.Ps. (Syd)