Stojan Zupljanin in the courtroom

After a two-week break, the trial of former Bosnian Serb police officials Mico Stanisic and Stojan Zupljanin continued with the evidence of protected witness SZ 023. Stanisic and Zupljanin are charged with crimes against Croats and Muslims throughout BH in 1992.

From brief parts of the hearing open to the public it could be concluded that in1992 the witness worked in the Security Services Center in Banja Luka. In a short examination-in chief the witness confirmed that he had attended the collegium meetings in the Security Services Center together with all the sectors heads, where they discussed the current problems.

In the cross-examination, prosecutor Thomas Hannis showed the witness a letter that Zupljanin sent to Biljana Plavsic in mid-1991. At the time Plavsic was the president of the Council for the Protection of the Constitutional Order. In the letter, Zupljanin asks her if he could interpret the fact that a document presented at a meeting in the MUP headquarters was printed on green paper as a ‘sign of the Muslim domination’ in the republican police. Zupljanin says in the letter that he was ‘flabbergasted’. Zupljanin goes on to say in his letter that a significant number of police trainees were Muslims from Sandzak and that, in his view, this should be prevented ‘at any cost’. The prosecutor then concluded that Zupljanin ‘was not glad’ that some Muslims attended the police training center and that he had a ‘problem’ with it. The witness said that he ‘did not have an opportunity to learn about the problem’.

Among the documents the prosecutor showed was an order of the Crisis Staff of the Autonomous Region Krajina signed by Radoslav Brdjanin, which states that ‘only personnel of Serb ethnicity’ could hold managerial posts. Not all Serbs were eligible, either: only those who ‘are ideologically clear that the SDS is the only representative of the Serb nation’. The prosecutor then showed Zupljanin’s memo to all police stations in which he relays Brdjanin’s order. Zupljanin stressed that the chiefs of police stations were duty bound to comply with the order when they recommend personnel for managerial posts. As the hearing often went into closed session, the witness’s answers about the documents were not made public.

The prosecution sought leave to call Mirza Lisinovic, former police commander in Doboj, in an effort to contest some claims made by Andrija Bjelosevic, former chief of the Security Services Center in Doboj who testified in Mico Stanisic’s defense.

Sharing