Challenging the expert report about the expulsion of Croats from the so-called Republic of Serbian Krajina, Franko Simatovic’s defense counsel put it to the witness that they had left because life was better in other parts of Croatia


A report by Ana Marija Radic on demographic changes in Croatia during the war was discussed today at the trial of the former Serb secret police chief Jovica Stanisic and his assistant Franko Simatovic.

Witness Radic has for years headed the Directorate for Displaced Persons, Returnees and Refugees in the Croatian government and has already testified as an expert witness in the Vojislav Seselj trial. She was asked by the Tribunal to write a detailed report on the number of people who had fled from the war-torn areas between 1991 and 1995. The public never did get to hear the figure because prosecutor Rachael Friedman did not read out the summary of the witness’s statement and the examination mostly focused on the methodology Radic used in putting together her report.

The figures from Ana Marija Radic’s report, whatever they are, were not to the liking of Simatovic’s defense counsel Vladimir Petrovic. In his cross-examination, he tried to prove that the data were unreliable because the questionnaires used to list the displaced persons and refugees in Croatia did not ask why those people left their homes.

The defense counsel put it to the witness that people were leaving their homes in Krajina for economic reasons, to settle in the parts of Croatia that were not occupied. When she was asked if it was nicer to live in Zagreb or in Petrinja, she said, ‘the whole state was affected by the war and shortages’. No one left their home because life was better somewhere else, she said. When the defense lawyer insisted on this point, she said that the departure of the entire non-Serb population from an area in Croatia for economic reasons would have been ‘a demographic phenomenon’. ‘I think it is more than a coincidence,’ she concluded.

Petrovic noted that the report is not specific about the sources for the data, and there are no data about the Serbs who had fled Croatia during Operation Storm in 1995.

‘How could we keep track of the people who were not in the Croatian territory?’ Radic replied. As she said, the Croatian government assessed that about 300,000 Serbs left Croatia during the war; 126,000 of them returned. They were treated the same as the Croatian returnees, she added.

Stanisic and Simatovic are charged with the crimes against non-Serb civilians committed by the police and paramilitary units under their control during the war in Bosnia and Croatia. Jovica Stanisic’s defense did not have any questions for the witness. The trial continues on Monday, 21 June.

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