Former member of the Red Berets claims that in April 1992 the accused Franko Simatovic briefed the specials in Ilok, telling them they would soon attack Bosanski Samac. Soon after, the joint Serbian forces took Samac. The witness claims he saw Red Berets beat non-Serb prisoners on two occasions and was present when civilians were killed in Crkvina


The trial of the two former heads of the Serbian state security service, Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, for crimes in Croatia and BH, continued today with the evidence about the capture of Bosanski Samac. A former member of a special unit run by the Serbian state security service called the Red Berets testified under the pseudonym JF-047 and with image and voice distortion as protective measures.

In the spring on 1992, the witness underwent training in the Pajzos camp in Ilok. As he recounted, his group was under the command of two Red Berets members, nicknamed Debeli and Crni, and the commander of the whole unit was Franko Simatovic, a/k/a Frenki. After the training, in early April 1992, Frenki visited the camp to brief some 40 to 50 people, including the Serbian specials and a ‘group of lads’ from Bosnia. He told them they would soon take part in the capture of Bosanski Samac and that they would be flown to the BH territory in helicopters.

The attack on Samac begun in the evening of 16 April, and by early morning the next day, Serbs established control over the town. According to the witness, the Territorial Defense and the Yugoslav Army troops took part in the attack side by side with the Berets. The joint forces were headed by the commander of the JNA 17th Tactical Group, a man nicknamed Kriger.

The witness stayed in Samac for four days. On two occasions, he witnessed the beating of non-Serb prisoners. The first time he saw a Red Beret and two Territorial Defense soldiers beat a prisoner in civilian clothes near the garages that belonged to the Territorial Defense. They punched and kicked him, and, as he put it, ‘there might have been some bats involved too’. The witness was looking at the scene through the window of the police station. On the second occasion, he saw another prisoner being beaten by four or five Serbs; two were Red Berets. He heard of other such incidents, but refused to comment on them because, as he said, ‘people were saying all kinds of things in those days’.

In the statement he gave to the OTP investigators in 2004, admitted into evidence today, the witness said that in early May 1992 he saw the killing of five to seven men in Crkvina near Samac. He testified about the incident for the most part in closed session. The public heard only that he went to Crkvina with the paramilitary leader Slobodan Miljkovic Lugar and some Red Berets and that the prisoners were kept in a hangar. According to the evidence of witnesses who testified at the Samac trial, the detainees were kept in the stadium in Crkvina. They were taken from there on 7 May 1992 by Lugar and were killed afterwards.

The witness was then transferred to Brcko. Another Red Berets group was stationed there, he recounted. They were under the command of Zivorad Ivanovic a/k/a Zika Crnogorac. He too was Simatovic’s subordinate. Vaso Mijovic belonged to that group. According to the witness, Mijovic was in charge of organizing the transportation of weapons, ammunition and fuel from Belgrade to Brcko, both for the Red Berets and the Republika Srpska Army.

Simatovic’s defense started cross-examining the witness as the hearing today drew to a close, but it proceeded in closed session. The Red Berets insider will continue his evidence tomorrow.

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