Court Hears of VRS Intercepts

Velma Šarić

IWPR-trained journalist

Monday, 28 June, 2010

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The Hague trial of former Bosnian Serb army, VRS, general Zdravko Tolimir heard last week about VRS conversations intercepted by the Bosnian army in the aftermath of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

Testimony from last week’s witness was part of prosecution efforts to confirm the authenticity of alleged intercepted communications between VRS officers recorded in 1995 by members of Bosnian government army and intelligence forces.

Protected witness PW-030, a former commander of an intelligence unit of the Bosnian army, gave the tribunal last week his recollection of the said intercepted communications.

Tolimir, former assistant commander for intelligence and security of the main staff of the VRS and a top aide to fugitive ex-general and Hague indictee Ratko Mladic, is charged with genocide and other crimes in relation to the execution of 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys in Srebrenica, in July 1995.

PW-030 has already appeared before the tribunal – in December 2006, he testified in the case against seven former Bosnian Serb army and police officers charged with crimes committed in Srebrenica in 1995.

At the beginning of last week’s hearings, prosecutor Rupert Elderkey read a resume of the testimony PW-030 had given at the so-called Srebrenica Seven trial. Most of the testimony was read in a closed session.

During the 1992-95 Bosnian war, PW-030 was the commander of a surveillance unit in the second corps of the Bosnian army. The unit was part of the Bosnian army’s intelligence service and was tasked with intercepting, registering and recording communications between enemy forces during the war.

Presenting the witness’s previous statement, the prosecutor said that PW-030’s unit "consisted of two subunits, with each having a maximum of nine people. They were in charge of the communications infrastructure and they all did their job as [well] as they could."

As a unit commander, the witness took shifts in working with his subordinates.

PW-030 commanded a unit positioned at what was referred to by the prosecution as the "southern interception outpost”. This was described as a hillside outpost with no obstacles around, so that the witness and his unit could listen to communications by the VRS without problems.

The prosecutor added that it was PW-030's job "to observe relay communications, and regularly check whether relay stations had been set up".

”Every two to three days, he would carry out the scan for new relay stations. If new ones were found, he would communicate this to the Bosnian army command, which would then decide whether these were worth intercepting or not," he added.

In the summer of 1995, the prosecutor said, reading from PW-030’s testimony from 2006, "the unit was sent to north-eastern Bosnia to listen in on the communications of the Drina corps, which was active in the area".

The Drina corps of the VRS was involved in several military operations locally at the time, including operations in Srebrenica.

The prosecutor went on to quote PW-030’s statement by saying that the witness' unit involvement "was not limited to the surveillance of the Drina corps only" but this was their most intensive activity.

"My unit's task was to listen to VRS conversations," the witness said in the testimony read out by the prosecutor.

In this testimony, the witness explained how his unit operated. After being intercepted and recorded, communications by the VRS would be transcribed into notebooks and then sent to a command of the Bosnian army where an operator would type them into the computer, the witness said in this testimony.

At last week’s hearings, PW-03 confirmed that he had personally written down four of the intercepted conversations which were shown to him in court by the prosecution.

One of these alleged intercepts was a conversation between Radislav Krstic and Vujadin Popovic, which took place in the afternoon of August 2, 1995.

Popovic, who was a VRS lieutenant-colonel and chief of security for the Drina corps, was convicted of genocide and sentenced to life imprisonment by the tribunal two weeks ago.

Krstic, who was the deputy commander of the Drina corps, was sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment in April 2004 for aiding and abetting genocide. According to tribunal judges, both men had key roles in the events in Srebrenica in July of 1995.

The content of the alleged four intercepts, including the conversation between Popovic and Krstic, was not revealed in open session, but they were all entered into evidence after the witness confirmed their authenticity.

During the cross-examination of the witness, Tolimir, who is defending himself at this trial, asked how long these conversations would normally last.

"In most cases around five minutes," the witness replied.

"Were there cases when the conversations would take longer than that," Tolimir then asked. "Yes, some of them lasted more than an hour," answered PW-030, citing what he said were exchanges between wartime Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic, Biljana Plavsic, Momcilo Krajisnik and Nikola Koljevic with their advisers “in Moscow, Paris and London”.

"These were often discussions about concrete measures that should be taken, or even tricks, such as the arrest of UN peacekeeping troops and taking them hostage," the witness added.

Former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic is currently standing trial at the tribunal for genocide and other war crimes.

According to the indictment against him, between approximately May 26, 1995 and June 19, 1995, Bosnian Serb forces detained over 200 United Nations peacekeepers and military observers and held them at various locations in Republika Srpska.

Threats were issued to third parties, ”including NATO and UN commanders, that further NATO attacks on Bosnian Serb military targets would result in the injury, death or continued detention of the detainees”.

Some of the detainees were assaulted or otherwise maltreated during their captivity.

"I heard and recorded some of these proposals myself, although it was mostly younger colleagues who would record these long conversations, as they had more time on their hands, and I was busy with my other duties as unit commander," PW-030 added.

The details of these intercepts were not discussed in the open session.

The trial continues this week.

Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained reporter in Sarajevo.