At the trial of Mico Stanisic and Stojan Zupljanin, yet another former policeman contends that before the war, Serb personnel were marginalized in the MUP of the Republic of BH. When the Serb MUP was established, local crisis staffs and an inefficient judiciary prevented the police from doing their job


Slobodan Skipina, former chief of the National Security Department in the Republika Srpska MUP, is testifying for the prosecution at the trial of the former Bosnian Serb police officials. On the second day of his evidence, Skipina mostly agreed with the arguments put forth by the defense lawyers representing Mico Stanisic and Stojan Zupljanin.

In a brief cross-examination, Stojan Zupljanin’s defense counsel referred to a speech the accused gave at a meeting of the Serbian MUP leadership on 11 July 1992. Zupljanin complained that the army and the crisis staffs were detaining civilians in prison camps and collection centers and then let the MUP personnel guard them, creating problems for the police. The defense counsel noted that the chiefs of the public security centers and stations complained, saying that the crisis staff members ‘were interfering’ with their work, particularly in places where the local authorities funded the police. The witness confirmed this, saying that the police faced such problems.

The witness agreed with Zupljanin’s complaints about the inefficient justice system, noting that letting the arrested criminals go free ‘demoralized the desire of the people to do police work’ and ‘blunted the edge in the fight against crime’. The defense counsel then pointed to Zupljanin’s complaints against ‘the break-down in the communications system’. The witness said that he couldn’t speak about the communications system in the public security department.

Mico Stanisic’s defense counsel focused on the events before the period covered by the indictment, probing the situation in the MUP of the Republic of BH in 1991. The witness agreed with the defense counsel’s suggestion that ethnic Serb professionals were marginalized, retired or assigned to the local police as desk officers. According to the witness, the person responsible for that was Hilmo Selimovic, former director of the Sarajevo brewery. Selimovic, who came to the MUP after the parties divided the posts among them, ‘carried out purges’ in the police.

Stanisic’s defense counsel Slobodan Cvijetic will continue and complete his cross-examination of witness Skipina tomorrow.

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