Vladimir Corbic, defence witness of Jovica Stanisic

Jovica Stanisic’s defense case continued with the evidence of a former intelligence officer from Novi Pazar, Vladimir Corbic. An hour into the examination-in chief it was still not clear why Corbic was called to give evidence. Corbic talked about the situation in Sandzak from 1991 to 1995. This fits with the time frame of the indictment but not with the geographical area relevant for the allegations in the indictment against the former chiefs of the Serbian State Security Service Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic. The two are on trial for crimes committed by the police and paramilitary formations against non-Serbs in Croatia and BH. There may have been information more relevant for the case in Corbic’s written statement that was admitted into evidence, but defense counsel Jordash didn’t read out the summary, although the Trial Chamber demanded it in a previous order.

In his evidence Corbic said that in the Sandzak area in the first half of the 1990s several sabotage and paramilitary groups operated under the aegis of the Muslim National Council headed by Sulejman Ugljanin. Some of those units were trained in Turkey. Their goal was a violent secession of Sandzak from Serbia; they also wanted to help the Muslims in BH, the witness said.

The defense counsel asked about the meeting held in Jovica Stanisic’s office in Belgrade in 1993, where the witness and other State Security Service staff proposed that an anti-terrorist unit be set up under the service’s command to deal with Muslim extremism. The witness said that nothing happened after the meeting; as far as he knew, no unit was established.

In the cross-examination, prosecutor Travis Farr showed a 1993 document of the State Security Service stating that about 140 billion dinars were earmarked for anti-terrorist units under the command of the State Security Service. Belgrade Center of the State Security Service recieved only 5 billiion dinars.The witness nevertheless claimed that ‘at least to my knowledge there was no anti-terrorist unit under the State Security Service control’.

Apart from the meeting with Stanisic in 1993, the witness said in his statement that in that period he had reported three or four times to the State Security Service chief about the situation in Sandzak. According to the witness, Stanisic went to Novi Pazar to see for himself what was happening in the field. The prosecutor used this opportunity to put it to Corbic that Stanisic was ‘an active and well-informed chief’ who was meeting regularly with the subordinate intelligence officers and was making field trips. Corbic mostly agreed with the suggestion.

The prosecutor suggested that dealing with extremism in Sandzak in fact boiled down to arresting and abusing Muslim civilians. The prosecutor showed a report from the Humanitarian Law Centre, which states that from October 1993 to March 1994 over 300 Muslims were beaten in police stations in Tutin, Sjenica and Novi Pazar. One of those Muslims told the Centre staff that he was beaten on his soles and that Vladimir Corbic apologized a little while later, telling the Muslim ‘the rifle you bought would be treated as a voluntarily surrendered weapon’. The witness replied that the claim ‘beggared belief’. The prosecutor then sought to tender the report into evidence to ‘discredit the witness’.

Vladimir Corbic completed his evidence today. Jovica Stanisic’s defense case will continue on Tuesday.

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