The last hearing of the year 2011 at the trial of the former chiefs of the Serbian State Security Service, Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, ended today with the testimony of a protected witness testifying under the pseudonym DFS 014. The witness was called by Simatovic’s defense and testified with image and voice distortion as protective measures. He testified for the most part in closed sessions in part due to technical problems during the first half of the testimony.

In brief periods in open session, the public did not hear what the witness was doing at the time. The witness was asked several questions about the special unit training center in the Krajina village of Bruska. The witness said that Captain Dragan ran the training camp for four or five months in 1993 and that the camp was known as the ‘Alpha Training Center’.

The witness contends that the soldiers from Krajina were trained in the training camp. Defense counsel Petrovic corroborated the claim with a report of the 7^th Corps of the Serbian Army of Krajina. The report stated that a number of their platoon and squad leaders had been trained in the Alpha Center. A man by the name of Budimir Milisavljevic a/k/a Cale was mentioned as one of the instructors. Milisavljevic signed the document which states that the center in Bruska was designated as ‘military post code 9050’. The defense is using this evidence to show that Captain Dragan had ties with the Krajina army, in a bid to contest the prosecution case that Vasiljkovic was an agent of the Serbian State Security Service.

A video recording of the meeting in the Knin cinema in the early 1990s was admitted into evidence today. The recording shows Milan Babic and the officials of the Krajina Serbian Democratic Party loyal to him leaving the talks about the possible peaceful solution of the Krajina issue. A Serb politician from Zagreb Milorad Pupovac was also there. The witness said he was not at the meeting but recognized the place where it was held and some of the participants.

The examination-in chief of the witness was completed today. The witness will return to The Hague for the cross-examination in January 2012 because the Tribunal’s three-week winter recess begins on Monday. The trial is set to resume on Tuesday, 10 January 2012. It remains to be seen who will appear in court, the witness who testified today or some other witness because the Orthodox Christmas and New Year are celebrated that week. This has led the judges to consider calling a witness who is not an Orthodox Christian, such as the remaining expert witness of Stanisic’s defense, Brown, who will contest the authenticity of parts of Mladic’s diaries.

Former chiefs of the Serbian State Security Service Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic are charged with crimes against non-Serbs committed from 1991 to 1995 by the police and paramilitary units under their control as part of the implementation of the goal of the joint criminal enterprise they belonged to: the ethnic cleansing of large parts of Croatia and BH.

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