Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic in the courtroom

The defense of the former chief of the Serbian State Security Service Jovica Stanisic will begin its case tomorrow morning with the opening statement delivered by his defense lawyers. The opening statement will take two hours, it was said today at the pre-defense conference conducted by Judge Orie and his Trial Chamber. The defense of the second accused Franko Simatovic was supposed to deliver the opening statement, but his lawyers decided not to, because they have not yet completed their investigations as they prepare their case.

The Trial Chamber granted Stanisic’s defense leave to call the 33 witnesses they applied for. Simatovic’s defense will call 20 witnesses, but may seek leave to call additional 10 to 15 witnesses at a later stage. Although the defense asked for about 90 hours, the judges allotted 70 court hours to each of the defense teams for the examination-in chief of their witnesses. If the prosecution gets the same amount of time for the cross-examination, the trial may end in late 2011 or in early 2012, provided there were no unexpected delays.

However, the defense case has come across minor obstacles already and Stanisic’s defense will not be able to call their first witnesses immediately after the opening statement tomorrow. They will have to wait until next week. The Serbian authorities haven’t yet cleared the first witnesses scheduled to testify in The Hague. If they get the clearance soon, the first witness will start testifying on Tuesday. The identity of the witnesses was not disclosed today and in all likelihood, they will testify in closed session. It was indicated today that former deputy chief prosecutor Graham Blewitt was on Stanisic’s witness list and that Simatovic would testify in his own defense.

An additional problem hindering the defense and the prosecution is the decision by the Serbian National Council for Cooperation with the Tribunal to redact portions of the vast number of documents disclosed to the defense so far; this decision was issued at the request of the Security and Information Agency, the successor of the State Security Service. As the National Council explained, the Security and Information Agency held that the redacted parts ‘are not relevant for the trial of the former chiefs of the Serbian State Security’. Since nobody in the courtroom was prepared to let the Security and Information Agency decide what is and what isn’t relevant in the evidence used at the trial, the Trial Chamber allowed the defense and the prosecution to file a joint request to the Serbian authorities to revoke the redactions. Neither party objected to the request of the Security and Information Agency to admit the documents into evidence under seal and not to show them publicly.

Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic are charged with taking part in the joint criminal enterprise aimed at ethnically cleansing large parts of Croatia and BH; this joint criminal enterprise was allegedly implemented through the crimes committed by the police and paramilitary units under their control. The prosecution rested its case in February 2011, having called a total of 62 witnesses.

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