COURTSIDE: Prijedor Genocide Trial

Radovan Kreic told the tribunal that the municipal executive committee, presided over by the late Milan Kovacevic, had far greater political power. He said Stakic was a politician "without particular personal authority - in distinction from Kovacevic".

He thus gave a somewhat different assessment of Kovacevic's powers from the one heard the previous week in the testimony of the man’s widow - who claimed "none of them could exert any influence upon the police or the military".

Later on, Kreic - former head of the health insurance fund in Prijedor - said that from what he knew, politicians could not influence the military or the police, both blamed for inflicting a catalogue of horrors on the local Muslim population.

Kreic said he realised that when he tried to intervene with the municipal authorities to have his deputy, Bosniak (Bosnian Muslim) Sead Cikota, released from the Omarska camp.

On that occasion, he was instructed to approach the head of police Simo Drljaca, who promised to see “what could be done”. However, he did nothing, and Cikota remained in Omarska until the camp was closed, and was then transferred to Trnopolje.

Prosecutor Ann Sutherland indicated that the witness had personally fired his deputy once Cikota had been taken to Omarska.

Kreic replied that he dismissed all the employees who did not come to work for more than five days and failed to provide explanation for their absence. “That was required by law and the orders issued by the crisis staff,” the witness said.

The same law was the main excuse for depriving Prijedor’s Bosniaks and Croats of their jobs in 1992. It is stated in Stakic's indictment that dismissal from work was one of the procedures used to expel non-Serbs from the municipality.

The same law did not apply to the defendant. Stakic still has his work-place in Prijedor waiting for him until he returns after completion of the trial, or until it becomes clear that he will not be returning to work.

After the arrest of Kovacevic and the killing of Drljaca by SFOR in 1997, Stakic tried to find shelter in Belgrade, where he was arrested and sent to The Hague in 2001.

Vjera Bogati is an IWPR correspondent in The Hague and a journalist with SENSE news agency.