Wayne Jordash, defence counsel of Jovica Stanisic

The defense contends that the prosecution case about Jovica Stanisic’s responsibility for war crimes is based on ‘rumors, mythology, exaggeration and pure fabrication’. In his opening statement today, defense counsel Wayne Jordash said that the defense would quash such allegations in the course of its case. Consequently, the former chief of the Serbian State Security (DB) ‘has to be acquitted on all counts in the indictment’ charging him with participation in the joint criminal enterprise aimed at the expulsion of non-Serbs from large parts of Croatia and BH.

Stanisic is accompanied in the dock by his former colleague Franko Simatovic. Simatovic’s speech at a ceremony in a special police training center in Kula in 1997 is one of the cornerstones of the prosecution case about the role played in the war by the Serbian State Security Special Operations Unit, the so-called Red Berets. The defense counsel called Simatovic’s speech ‘a meaningless fabrication from a bad Hollywood movie made by a vain man who had just got back from the war and was bragging to show how strong he is’. On that occasion in Kula, Simatovic said that the State Security Service controlled about 5,000 men that captured a large number of Croatian towns and villages in the fighting in 1991, and that the security service ran 26 training camps in Croatia and BH.

Stanisic’s defense argues that the 5.000 fighters in Krajina were under the unified command of the JNA and that the prosecution in the course of its case attributed to the accused ‘the misdeeds of not only the State Security Service, but of the entire Serbian MUP’. The prosecution alleges, for example, that they are responsible for the crimes committed by Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan’s paramilitary unit. According to the defense, Arkan had strong ties with interior minister Radmilo Bogdanovic and his assistant for public security Radovan Stojicic Badza, but not with Stanisic.

The accused did everything in his power to prevent the operation of paramilitary units and ‘would have done something had he known’ that Arkan’s men operated in some situations under the auspices of the State Security Service, the defense counsel stated. Stanisic didn’t know each and every individual employed in the service he headed and couldn’t have exerted control over thousands of people. In fact, he could not control the second accused Simatovic either.

In the course of its case, the defense will call former employees of the secret service to ‘unmask the myths’ about the Red Berets, the defense lawyer indicated. He agreed with the prosecution that the Red Berets’ first camp was established in the summer of 1990 in Golubic near Knin. The first trainees and instructors then went on to other areas as ‘professional volunteers’. Stanisic’s defense denies that the Serbian secret service had anything to do with the center in Golubic and with the trainees who later went to the frontlines. At the time, they were under the control of the army and police of the Serbs from Bosnia and Krajina. After the group underwent training in Golubic, it soon became famous and ‘in a bid to feed their fame, they claimed they operated under the command of the State Security Service’, Jordash claimed. ‘Journalists and the OTP in The Hague’ did the rest by ‘spreading the myth’.

Stanisic’s defense contends that the prosecution’s insistence on the allegation that the accused participated in the joint criminal enterprise was a ‘blunt instrument’ which yield no results, because the defense will successfully contest the prosecution case before the end of the trial, Jordash said.

Franko Simatovic’s defense will not deliver its opening statement. Stanisic’s first witness will appear in court on Tuesday, 21 June 2011.

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