Borislav Pelevic, defence witness of Franko Simatovic

Franko Simatovic’s defense continues its case with the evidence of Borislav Pelevic, a member the Serbian Assembly, a physician who teaches sports sciences and an official in the Serbian Kickboxing Association and the world kickboxing federation. The defense was mostly interested in the witness’s war career, which began in January 1992 when he joined Zeljko Raznatovic Arkan’s Serbian Volunteer Guard. As time went by, Pelevic and Arkan became very close.

Former chiefs of the Serbian State Security Service Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic are charged with crimes perpetrated by paramilitary formations such the Serbian Volunteer Guard, as the prosecution alleges. In his examination-in chief today, Borislav Pelevic strove to direct the attention of the Trial Chamber to the links between Arkan’s men on the one hand and the JNA and the Serb political leaderships in Krajina and Bosnia on the other, denying that the volunteers had anything to do with the Serbian police and its secret service.

The witness contends that after he joined the SDG he was sent to the training center in Erdut. The Erdut training center was issued arms from the local Territorial Defense and the JNA depots. Pelevic stressed that Arkan was on excellent terms with the Territorial Defense commander Radovan Stojicic a/k/a Badza and the commander of the JNA Novi Sad Corps Andrija Biorcevic. Biorcevic occasionally visited the center in Erdut. Biorcevic would address the lined-up volunteers as ‘Comrades’, communist-style. The volunteers would reply with the traditional Serbian greeting, ‘God help you’, and Pelevic found it ‘quite cute’. Pelevic denied that the Serbian State Security Service was in any way involved in the Erdut center, claiming that there was ‘substantial animosity’ between Arkan’s volunteers and the service headed by the accused at the time.

In the spring of 1992, Raznatovic ordered the witness to go to the Knin Krajina; he thus was not there when Arkan’s men entered Bijeljina and Zvornik. The witness spoke about those events based on the information he got when he returned to Erdut. As Pelevic claimed today, ‘I held in my hand an encrypted invitation’ sent by Biljana Plavsic to Arkan’s volunteers to protect the Serbs in Bijeljina. Arkan’s men took part in ‘the liberation’ of Zvornik on Plavsic’s orders, the witness maintained. For the action in Bijeljina, the unit had logistical support of the JNA. As for the Zvornik operation, it was carried out under the JNA command, the witness said. In a bid to highlight Arkan’s ties to the Krajina and Bosnian Serb leaderships, the defense tendered into evidence a series of photos from various meetings and conferences where Raznatovic was in the company of Radovan Karadzic, Biljana Plavsic and Goran Hadzic. The defense didn’t tender into evidence Plavsic’s ‘encrypted invitation’.

Pelevic’s involvement in the war was interrupted in 1994 when he was seriously injured in the shoulder and leg in the fighting in an area near Benkovac and Maslenica, in Croatia. As the witness said, that was the first time that Arkan’s men fought as a unit of the Serbian Army of Krajina. Until that time, the SDG was first part of the Territorial Defense and later of the Krajina police. The top SDG brass, including Arkan and Pelevic, did not merely fight; they were also involved in politics. In late 1992, they entered the parliament as ‘a citizens’ group’. A year later, they failed to win any seats in a snap election. The witness claims they were fiercely opposed to Slobodan Milosevic’s regime and ‘were robbed at the election’ in their second bid for parliamentary seats. Borislav Pelevic will continue his evidence tomorrow.

Sharing