Charles Kirudja, witness at the Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic trial

After more than a year, Charles Kirudja, former special advisor to the UN envoy in the former Yugoslavia Yasushi Akashi, returned to the witness stand to complete his evidence at the trial of former chiefs of the Serbian state security service, Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic. The two are charged with crimes the police and paramilitaries committed in Croatia and BH. The prosecution called Kirudja to testify in August 2009. In the meantime, Simatovic changed his defense team because his lead counsel died, and Kirudja returned to The Hague today for additional cross-examination.

Defense lawyer Vladimir Petrovic tried to challenge the allegation in the indictment that Simatovic participated in the arming of the Krajina Serbs and their preparations for the war. Petrovic blamed it on the JNA, noting that significant quantities of weapons were left behind after the Yugoslav People’s Army withdrew from Krajina. Some of the officers born in the region stayed behind. The witness agreed with the defense counsel. Asked if he saw special police units from Serbia in Krajina, Kirudja said that he couldn’t distinguish the Serb special police from Krajina from those from BH and Serbia.

Jovica Stanisic’s defense lawyers were allowed today to ask additional questions in cross-examination, because in the meantime they had obtained new documents about the role of the former Serbian state security service chief in the effort to release the UN hostages. The Bosnian Serb troops took 388 UNPROFOR staff hostage in the spring of 1995 in order to stop NATO air strikes on their positions. In August 2009, Kirudja testified that Stanisic was involved in the release of hostages on the orders of Slobodan Milosevic. Today Stanisic’s defense didn’t even try to contest that.

The defense today tried to depict Stanisic not only as an intermediary used by Milosevic, but the entire international community and a man who conveyed messages of peace issued by foreign officials – including Jacques Chirac – to the unreasonable Bosnian Serb leadership. Kirudja agreed that Stanisic did everything he could to set the hostages free but didn’t comment on the suggestion that Stanisic’s success in the ‘hostage crisis’ resulted in the Bosnian Serbs’ return to the negotiating table.

To further emphasize the sincere commitment of their client to achieving peace, the defense lawyers showed a text authored by British journalist Mischa Glenny, who said that Stanisic thwarted Karadzic’s plan to take 20 million dollars from the Greek authorities in exchange for the release of the hostages. The hostages were released ‘free of charge’ and many representatives of the international community congratulated Stanisic for his contribution, the defense lawyers said. Apart from remarking he found Glenny’s story ‘madly amusing’, Kirudja didn’t elaborate on the issue.

In the re-examination, prosecutor Groome asked the witness only one question: ‘Would the fact that Mr. Stanisic was able to enter Bosnia and achieve the release of the hostages without the use of force indicate he had authority and influence in that period’? Kirudja confirmed this.

The former UN official who served in the former Yugoslavia thus completed his sixth testimony before the Tribunal; not the last, because the prosecution teams plan to call him as a witness in the cases against Radovan Karadzic and former Bosnian Serb police officials Mico Stanisic and Stojan Zupljanin. The trial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic continued with the evidence of a protected witness testifying under the pseudonym JF-030. It proceeded in closed session.

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