Patrick Treanor, witness at the Ratko Mladic trial

In the final stage of the prosecution’s case at the trial of General Ratko Mladic the prosecution called its political expert Patrick Treanor. The transcript of Treanor’s evidence at the trial of Radovan Karadzic in 2011 was admitted into evidence. The two reports Treanor wrote about the evolution of the Bosnian Serb leadership from 1990 to 1995 were marked for identification.

In the reports Treanor provided a brief overview of the evolution and origin of the basic Serb political structures in BH, of the Serbian Democratic Party and its bodies, and of the main bodies in Republika Srpska. Treanor also described the establishment of the Bosnian Serb Assembly on 24 October 1991. By that time, as Treanor said, the Bosnian Serbs had already established at local levels parallel government structures, under the patronage of the SDS. The final step in the ‘creation of a separate state entity in Bosnia and Herzegovina’ was taken on 9 January 1992 when the Republic of the Serbian People in BH was proclaimed.

Referring to various documents produced by the Bosnian Serb Assembly, the prosecutor emphasized that under the February 1992 Constitution, the Serb republic of BH was a ‘State of the Serbian people’. Its territory comprised the autonomous regions, municipalities and other Serb ethnic areas, including the ‘areas where genocide against the Serb people was committed’. Treanor said that throughout the conflict, the Bosnian Serbs wanted to seize the territories which in their view belonged to them for historical reasons. From the very beginning, the Bosnian Serbs ‘openly’ made unilateral moves whose goal was to create their own state, Treanor explained.

The Republika Srpska Army was established when the Territorial Defense was re-organized at the Assembly session on 12 May 1992, Treanor said. Ratko Mladic was appointed the commander of the Main Staff. The Bosnian Serb strategic goals were formulated at the same session. Treanor also referred to the powers of the commander of the VRS Main Staff as provided by the Army Act, and the role and responsibilities of political leaders, including the leader of the SDS and RS president Radovan Karadzic, and his vice-presidents Biljana Plavsic and Nikola Koljevic. Finally, Treanor noted that the Bosnian Serb leadership was ‘very successful’ in accomplishing their fundamental goal: the ethnic division of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Treanor will continue answering Mladic’s defense tomorrow. The defense counsel spent most of the cross-examination arguing that the Serbs decided to establish their own state only after the Croats and Muslims changed their attitude towards the SFRY and decided to secede.

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