Goran Opacic, defence witness of Franko Simatovic

As prosecutor Groome set about cross-examining former member of the Krajina special unit Goran Opacic, he showed a series of documents meant to discredit the witness. Opacic was first a beat officer in the Croatian police, then a member of Captain Dragan’s Knindza unit and finally a member of the Benkovac Territorial Defense. The witness claims that his military CV is immaculate. The documents showed by the prosecutor indicated the opposite was true.

Opacic was called to testify by Franko Simatovic’s defense. Simatovic and the former chief of the Serbian State Security Service Jovica Stanisic are on trial for the crimes committed by the police and paramilitary formations in Croatia and BH. In the examination-in chief, the witness tried to downplay the role of the accused in the events in Krajina. The indictment alleges that the crimes against Croatian civilians were committed there.

A report of the Croatian intelligence service from 1993 states that Opacic was famous for his martial arts skills and that he killed a Croat prisoner in the Knin prison. The witness replied that only the part about the martial arts was true; everything else was a lie. Another intelligence report says that after he was wounded in 1993, Opacic received treatment in a hospital in Belgium under a false name, Goran Petrovic. Although the witness denied other parts of the report, he admitted that he had travelled on a forged passport. The passport was given to Opacic by the RSK ‘foreign minister’ Slobodan Jarcevic.

A document sent to the Serbian State Security Service in March 1999 notes that Goran Opacic and his two brothers were involved in the theft of tractors and household appliances and smuggling of cigarettes in Ilok. ‘I have never been involved in criminal activities’, the witness replied, saying those were all ‘lies and fabrications’, as were the findings in a judgment of a Serbian court which sentenced him to a one year suspended prison sentence for physical assault on the son of the president of the War Veterans’ Association in Loznica.

Finally, Opacic contradicted the evidence of witnesses in a Croatian court which sentenced him in absentia to 20 years, after finding him guilty of committing and ordering the murder of civilians in Skabrnja in November 1991. Opacic claimed he didn’t participate in the action but the prosecutor contested his claim, showing a report sent by a JNA major immediately after the operation. The report states that Opacic admitted he and his group were in Skabrnja but blamed ‘Chetnik volunteers’ for crimes.

The killing of 38 civilians in Skabrnja is listed in the indictment against Stanisic and Simatovic and the prosecutor has to prove the link between the perpetrators, including the witness, and the Serbian State Security Service. In the examination-in-chief, Opacic denied that he was a member of the Special Operations Unit run by the Serbian State Security Service. Today the prosecutor showed footage from a Special Operations Unit ceremony in Kula in 1997. The video shows Opacic in camouflage uniform wearing a red beret and shaking hands with Slobodan Milosevic. Opacic is given a diploma and a knife from Jovica Stanisic for his contribution to the war effort. Among all the men who were decorated that day, Opacic was the only one who was kissed three times on the cheek by Stanisic, who then went on to cite Opacic as an example of ‘heroism’ of the Special Operations Unit. The prosecutor put it to the witness that all those facts ‘unequivocally indicate’ that he was ‘from the first days of the war’ a member of the Serbian State Security Service and its special unit. ‘It appears to be so, but in fact it isn’t’, Opacic replied laconically.

The trial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic continues next Tuesday.

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