Dejan Lucic, defence witness of Franko Simatovic

In the cross-examination of Belgrade journalist Dejan Lucic, prosecutor Weber challenged his claims that in 1990 and 1991, Captain Dragan Vasiljkovic didn’t have any ties with the Serbian State Security Service. The prosecutor didn’t hesitate to challenge the witness’s credibility. Lucic was called to The Hague to testify in Franko Simatovic’s defense. Simatovic is on trial with his former boss in the Serbian State Security Service, Jovica Stanisic, for the crimes committed by the police and paramilitary units in the wars in Croatia and BH. Some of those units were trained by Captain Dragan.

In the examination-in chief, the witness insisted on Vasiljkovic’s close ties to the Serbian Renewal Movement. This prompted the prosecutor to show a part of a documentary film entitled The Unit. In the video, Captain Dragan says that in March 1991 he met people from the Serbian State Security Service, Franko Simatovic Frenki and Dragan Filipovic Fico, in the Metropol Hotel in Belgrade to organize the training of the special units in Krajina. In the same video, Vasiljkovic, who went by his false name, Daniel Snedden, said that ‘in a way I became friends with Frenki’. The witness replied he didn’t know anything about their relationship.

In the examination-in chief, Lucic claimed that he drove Captain Dragan to Knin and introduced him to Milan Martic and other Krajina officials. The prosecutor suggested that the witness also had links with the Serbian secret service. The prosecutor also referred to Vuk Draskovic’s public statements about Lucic: the president of the Serbian Renewal Movement said that Lucic was thrown out from the party in 1991 when it became known that Lucic ‘was in cahoots with the Serbian State Security Service’ and the military intelligence service. The witness denied this. Asked why he never denied it, the witness said that he ‘cannot deny what doesn’t exist’. Draskovic, who was part of the government, yielded more power than a ‘small free-lance intellectual’ like him, the witness explained.

The prosecutor put it to the witness that he was a longtime friend of the two accused. Lucic said they were mere acquaintances: he knew Simatovic from primary school and Stanisic from the Political Sciences Faculty. The witness admitted that he would get together with Simatovic in a café. In 2008 the witness contacted Stanisic for the last time when he presented Stanisic with one of his 14 books. In his texts published on his website, Lucic bragged about his friendship with the accused, the prosecutor insisted. Lucic explained that it was ‘a PR effort’ to sell his books.

Finally, in an attempt to challenge the witness’s credibility the prosecutor showed several titles from the witness’s website, such as They Are Already Here: the Guys from Mars and Is the Pope a Catholic Or a Satanist?. Asked if he really believed what those texts say, Lucic replied he didn’t write them but merely published them on the website he runs. The witness explained the link to the website of the Red Berets, a special unit run by the Serbian State Security Service, saying it was something ‘people are interested in’.

After Dejan Lucic completed his evidence, Simatovic’s defense called its next, protected, witness, testifying under the pseudonym DFS 014.

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