Halilovic is charged with responsibility for the massacre of 62 Croat civilians in the villages of Grabovica and Uzdol during the so-called “Neretva-93” operation to relieve the blockade on Mostar.
Over the last two months, members of the Bosnian army’s Ninth and Tenth Brigades have appeared in court to confirm their involvement in the killings.
Prosecutors claim the crimes were a direct result of a decision by Halilovic himself to use the two units, which had already earned themselves a reputation for indiscipline whilst based in the capital Sarajevo.
They say it was also Halilovic who ordered that the famously lawless troops be billeted in Croatian homes in the village of Grabovica, a move the general himself later described as “a monumental mistake”.
Dzevad Tirak, former chief of staff of the Sixth Corps, was unable to verify in court that it was the accused who had selected the Ninth and Tenth Brigades to take part in the mission.
But he confirmed that prior to that time there had already been many allegations made about their involvement in criminal activities.
“Whoever brought these units to that area didn’t know what he was doing,” he said.
The witness rebuffed claims by defence lawyers that it was in fact his own Sixth Corps that had responsibility for the two brigades at the time.
Tirak, who was stationed in Sarajevo at the beginning of the war, told judges that the Ninth and Tenth Brigades had a reputation for mistreating and terrorising citizens in the Bosnian capital.
“They were brigades prone to incidents,” he said, adding later that they “had the worst reputation in terms of discipline”.
He also testified that even the units’ commanders were involved in criminal activity and, as a result, residents of Sarajevo complained that they “felt unsafe in their own city among their own men”.
Besides petty criminality, the Ninth and Tenth Brigades also participated in an armed mutiny in July 1993.
The witness said complaints about the troops’ behaviour had been communicated directly to Halilovic.
“When I was told that units with such a reputation were brought [to Herzegovina], I was very surprised,” he told the court.
He did concede, however, that “the perception prevalent at that time was that Sefer Halilovic was the only man who could put [them] under control to a certain extent”.
At the beginning of the war in Bosnia, Halilovic was commander of the entire Bosnian armed forces. But in June 1993, he was replaced by General Rasim Delic, also now awaiting trial for war crimes at the Hague tribunal.
Prosecutors say Halilovic never accepted Delic as his commander and insisted on bringing the unruly units to Hercegovina because he believed he could control them and they would help him regain his former glory.
In a radio interview given just a few days after the massacres took place and played in the courtroom two months ago, Halilovic was heard to say that one of the main reasons the units came to Hercegovina was because they were well-trained in offensive operations, which was rare in the Bosnian army at the time.
In court, Tirak appeared to show some limited sympathy for this position, describing the soldiers of the Ninth and Tenth Brigades as “very brave” and describing how, at the beginning of the war in 1992, they “not only defended their lines, but also attacked the enemy and were very successful”.
But when prosecutor Manoj Sachdeva asked the witness if he had heard of any “great military successes of the Ninth and Tenth Brigade in 1993”, he admitted he wasn’t aware of any such achievements.
In response to the prosecutor’s inquiry as to who sent the units to Hercegovina to take part in the Neretva-93 operation and why, the witness simply replied, “I don’t know.”
He insisted that the command of his own Sixth Corps, who usually had formal jurisdiction over the parts of Hercegovina in which the Neretva-93 operation was to be carried out, had not “in any way [been] involved in its planning”.
“These [troops] were never resubordinated to the Sixth Corps and we had no control over them,” he said.
Prosecutors say Halilovic was specially appointed commander of the Neretva-93 operation by Delic and was therefore responsible for all the units involved.
But defence lawyers claim the accused in fact acted only as a kind of “inspector” on the mission, had no command authority and did not order the Ninth and Tenth Brigades to take part.
The witness told the court that shortly after the Grabovica massacre, he was so frustrated by the presence of the Ninth and Tenth Brigades in Hercegovina that he personally asked Delic to order them to return to Sarajevo.
The general’s reply, he said, was “diplomatic”, assuring the witness that he “would look into it and take whatever steps were required”.
Halilovic eventually took some members of the Ninth and Tenth Brigades back to Sarajevo on September 20, before returning to Hercegovina. The remaining troops from the two brigades did not return to the capital until several weeks later.
The trial continues next week.
Merdijana Sadovic is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
