Court Told How Bosnian Serb Phone Calls Were Intercepted
Bosnian army surveillance officer describes talk of “cleaning” Srebrenica.
Court Told How Bosnian Serb Phone Calls Were Intercepted
Bosnian army surveillance officer describes talk of “cleaning” Srebrenica.
The trial of former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic continued this week with testimony from two protected witnesses who described intercepted telephone conversations that the accused had with other officials had at the time of the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995.
At that time, the witnesses were members of an audio surveillance team in the Bosnian government army, ABiH, and were tasked with intercepting telephone conversations between Bosnian Serb political and military leaders, including Karadzic and former Bosnian Serb Army, VRS, chief Ratko Mladic. Mladic is currently awaiting trial for genocide at the Hague tribunal.
Karadzic’s conversations with VRS officers Ljubisa Beara and Radislav Krstic, who have been found guilty of genocide by the Hague tribunal, were also intercepted.
Appearing under the pseudonyms KDZ-245 and KDZ-126, the witnesses were in court this week to verify the authenticity of various intercepted conversations which the prosecution intends to submit into evidence.
Prosecutors are trying to prove that Karadzic was fully aware of developments in Srebrenica at the time of the 1995 massacre.
Karadzic is accused of planning and overseeing the massacre of some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys at Srebrenica in July 1995 and the 44-month siege of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. The indictments against him include genocide, extermination, murder, persecutions and other crimes against humanity and war crimes.
During Bosnia’s 1992-95 war, witness KDZ-245 served in the ABiH surveillance unit in the so-called “southern facility”, where communications in the Srebrenica region were intercepted.
“Our unit was formed to listen in on the conversations of the highest level of the Republika Srpska political and military leadership,” the witness explained, naming Nikola Koljevic, Biljana Plavsic and the accused as the “principal targets” for intercepting calls.
Plavsic was convicted by the Hague tribunal for war crimes committed during the Bosnian war, while Koljevic died in 1997. He was not indicted by the tribunal.
For the most part, documents containing transcripts of the phone intercepts were kept from the public, so as to preserve the protected identity of the witnesses.
“These are the conversations which we intercepted and then recorded before creating protocols of such conversations,” KDZ-245 told the court.
The witness added that in most cases it was easy to know who was speaking in these calls since they identified themselves.
“Most people were identified by stating their names, so there was no need to decipher anyone’s identity or make assumptions about who was speaking,” he said.
One key conversation that KDZ-245 mentioned was between Beara and Krstic on July 12, “after Srebrenica had been taken by VRS forces”, the witness said.
“During the conversation, the two discussed ‘cleaning’ and Beara informed Krstic that the cleaning was going on well and that there were no survivors, which is ‘how it should be’,” the witness said. “What they meant by ‘cleaning’ was obviously the massacre that was going on.”
The witness also confirmed that he recorded a conversation between Karadzic and another individual whose name was not revealed, in which the Bosnian Serb president repeated that he had “decided to allow the UN to participate in the evacuation of the civilians from Srebrenica” following the Serb takeover of the enclave.
KDZ-126 provided more technical details about phone interception, explaining what equipment was used for listening in to conversations at that time.
During the cross-examination, Karadzic, who represents himself in court, asked KDZ-245 whether he was aware of the fact that many Bosnian Serb officials whose conversations were intercepted were prone to “exaggerating and bragging” when they spoke about events in Srebrenica.
The witness replied that “the claims made by people in the intercepted conversations seemed very authentic”.
Karadzic put it to the witness that Bosnian Serb officials “were aware” that their conversations were being intercepted and were “giving false information with the intent of confusing or misleading”.
He asked KDZ-126 whether members of his unit “actually recorded the conversations, or simply wrote them down”. The witness replied that all conversations were “indeed recorded”.
“There were technical problems at times, of course, but none of this ever interfered with or significantly influenced the methodology of work or the results of the interception,” he told the court.
“What we did was to intercept, record the conversations and then write down their contents and – without any modifications or comments – send them on to the respective command structures,” witness KDZ-126 said.
The trial continues next week, with the appearance of another protected witness for the prosecution.
Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained reporter in Sarajevo.
