Aco Draca, defence witness of Franko Simatovic

Former member of the State Security Service of the so-called SAO Krajina Aco Draca yesterday said that the Service was first established and then abolished in 1991. Today Draca said that the service was reestablished in August 1992. At that time, the witness was appointed deputy chief. A year later, he was promoted to the post of the chief. Draca insisted that from 1991 to 1995, he and his colleagues never received any help, instructions or orders from the Serbian secret service.

Aco Draca testifies in Franko Simatovic’s defense, who is on trial with the erstwhile chief of the Serbian State Security Service Jovica Stanisic for crimes in Croatia and BH. Their responsibility stems from their support to the police and the military of the Serbs in Bosnia and Krajina who took part in the murders, persecution and other war crimes against Croat and Muslim civilians, as the prosecution alleges.

Today the witness denied that the two accused had any role in the murder and expulsion of civilians from several Krajina villages in 1991. The witness claimed that the attack on Skabrnja was launched by the JNA Knin Corps, which was under Ratko Mladic’s command at the time. The indictment alleges that ‘at least 38 civilians’ were killed in the attack. To corroborate its case, the defense showed the entry from Mladic’s war diary for 17 November 1991. Mladic ordered the Benkovac Brigade ‘to get its armored battalion moving a bit towards Skabrnja and to wipe that out’ the next day. Draca interpreted Mladic’s entry as an attempt to ‘intimidate’ the Croatian ZNG soldiers stationed in the Dalmatian village. Draca explained that the ‘getting the battalion to move a bit’ turned into a conflict when the Croats from Skabrnja purportedly fired on the JNA first. After the attack and the killing of civilians, the surviving villagers of Skabrnja asked to be moved to Zadar. The army organized their transport.

The attack on a nearby village of Nadin proceeded along similar lines. A number of civilians were killed after the JNA entered the village. The witness contends that the army sought help from the Krajina police to investigate crimes, but the perpetrators were never found. Some time later, in December 1991, according to the indictment, nine Croat civilians and a Serb named Svetislav Draca who was related to the witness, were killed in the village of Bruska. The perpetrators were never identified. The witness said that Milan Martic, who was the police chief in Knin at the time, ‘was furious’ and said that such incidents must be prevented.

The prosecution’s version of the events is somewhat different: the prosecution contends that the local Territorial Defense and Martic’s police also took part in the crimes against civilians, side by side with the JNA. The indictment alleges that Martic’s police was assisted by the Serbian State Security Service. The witness claimed that the JNA Knin Corps and Mladic’s assistant for artillery Atif Dudakovic, who later became the commander of the BH Army 5^th Corps, were responsible for an attack on the village of Lovinac in 1991. All the Croats fled the village after the attack.

Draca described his encounters with the two accused. In the fall of 1994, Draca saw them occasionally in the Operation Spider HQ on the Petrova Gora. Draca claims that it had been agreed by Fikret Abdic and Slobodan Milosevic that several groups of ‘instructors’ under the command of Zivadin Ivanovic Crnogorac, Milorad Ulemek Legija and Radojica Raja Bozovic should be sent to Western Bosnia, and this was done. As the witness explained, the Anti-Terrorist Unit of the Serbian State Security Service, known as the ‘Red Berets’, was in charge of the HQ security. Simatovic’s defense counsel Petrovic today said that it is the defense case that Operation Spider was a legitimate operation to support Abdic’s efforts to allow refugee civilians loyal to him to return from Krajina to Velika Kladusa.

Before Aco Draca began his testimony, the defense petitioned the Trial Chamber to order that Jovica Stanisic be examined by a specialist, because a decision has to be made on whether Stanisic will have to go to Cleveland to undergo surgery. His US and Serbian doctors consider that Stanisic’s condition can only be treated there.

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