Jovica Stanisic in the courtroom

Today, in the case of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, the prosecution filed a motion to Judge Orie’s Trial Chamber seeking to admit into evidence eight excerpts of audio recordings confiscated in February 2010 together with Ratko Mladic’s diaries in his family house. The audio tapes contain conversations between Mladic and other members of the joint criminal enterprise aimed, as alleged in the indictment, at ethnically cleansing large areas in Croatia and BH. The accused Stanisic is among the people mentioned in Mladic’s tapes.

In the annex, the prosecution attached summaries of those excerpts explaining their significance. On a tape recorded on 9 March 1995 Mladic speaks with Slobodan Milosevic, Momcilo Perisic and Jovica Stanisic. The importance of ‘Serb unity’ is discussed throughout the conversation. Mladic was in favor of establishing ‘a single state’, explaining that "the only point of combat that is understood by all members of the army and our entire population is that we should be one country. One army, just as we are one nation, one authority, just as we are one nation".

According to the prosecution, this conversation indicates there was a joint criminal enterprise and shows that its participants shared the same discriminatory intent to create a Serb state in the ethnically cleansed territory. The same tape shows that Mladic’s intention is supported by weapons shipments from Belgrade. Jovica Stanisic says, "we have supplied 47% of the army's requirements (weapons for the Bosnian Serb army) from Serbia. Sorry, from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’. The prosecution notes that the need to unify all Serbs is discussed in several other audio excerpts. Thus, in December 1995, Mladic says that "the Serbs could not have succeed in battles such as Srebrenica, Zepa, and Gorazde if the people had not remained one people".

Several audio excerpts show Stanisic’s ‘close and familiar relationship’ with Mladic, the prosecution contends. On a tape recorded on 29 April 1995, the commander of the Bosnian Serb army has no trouble getting Stanisic’s home telephone number from a man by the name of Sucevic in the Serbian MUP. Mladic and Stanisic exchange seasons’ greetings and the Serbian state security service chief promised help in letting the equipment that got stuck on the border pass.

At the meeting on 9 March 1995, Mladic, Milosevic, Perisic and Stanisic talked about the training and transfer of volunteers to Western Bosnia for the purpose of Operation Spider. In an excerpt from a 1996 tape, Mladic talks with Serbian president Milutinovic and is asking about the role Radojica Bozovic, a Red Berets commander, and of Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan, who commanded the Serbian Volunteer Guard, played in establishing ‘death camps’ in Krajina. Mladic also states that Bozovic is "MUP Serbia, the mafia".

The judges will rule on the prosecution’s motion tendering the documents into evidence after the defense submits its opinion on their authenticity and relevance.

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