Milorad Davidovic, a former chief inspector with the interior ministry force, MUP, described how in spring 1992 he witnessed “high quality weapons” and military equipment being transferred from Belgrade to the newly formed RS in Yugoslav army helicopters.
Davidovic appeared as a prosecution witness this week in the trial of former Bosnian Serb parliamentary speaker Momcilo Krajisnik, who faces charges of genocide and crimes against humanity for his alleged role in a plan to drive thousands of Muslims and Croats from territory earmarked for a future Serb state.
The witness also told the court that Krajisnik’s Serbian Democratic Party, SDS, had encouraged the RS police to take part in “organised criminal activities” throughout Serb-controlled territories - particularly the looting of Muslim and Croat homes - and that part of this financial gain went directly to the defendant and his then close ally, the former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic.
He also spoke of seeing a document in which Krajisnik had ordered a local official in Bijeljina to “encourage humane relocation of Muslim and Croat population” from Serb-held parts of Bosnia and that “armed forces and police should not interfere”.
Davidovic said that on April 6, 1992, he was summoned to a meeting with the then Yugoslav interior minister Petar Gracanin and another senior official, Mihalj Kertes, at which he was told that “a Bosnian Serb MUP should be formed” to protect Serbs in Bosnia.
Earlier witnesses at Krajisnik’s trial - including former RS justice minister Momcilo Mandic, who testified last year - confirmed in court that the decision of the RS authorities to establish their own police force in early 1992 was, de facto, the beginning of the war in Bosnia.
Last week, another prosecution witness, tribunal investigator Christian Nielsen, told the judges that Krajisnik had personally “urged the RS government to establish its own MUP as soon as possible” in order to “take and hold” the Serb territories in Bosnia.
At the April 6 meeting with Gracanin and Kertes, Davidovic was informed that his mission to Bosnia – where he was supposed to train RS special police - should be kept secret, because the MUP at that time could not be seen taking the side of the Bosnian Serbs.
The witness described Kertes – who was one of Serb president Slobodan Milosevic’s most important allies and who was believed to be central to providing logistics to the Serb wars in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo – as being particularly aggressive. When Davidovic and one of the police officials present at the meeting expressed their concerns about the legality of arming and supporting Bosnian Serbs, Kertes lashed out at them and ordered the witness to go to his home country, Bosnia, immediately “to help the Serbs”.
“Fuck the law! Do whatever I say - there is no other law,” Davidovic quoted Kertes as saying.
The witness then embarked on his secret journey, armed with forged documents which were supposed to hide the fact that he was a MUP official “in case I was killed or arrested”. But when he came to the Bosnian Serb held part of Sarajevo in May 1992, he soon realised that the newly formed RS police were involved in some extracurricular activities.
“There was a lot of crime and looting taking place, and most of it was carried out by the police officers,” said Davidovic.
Disgusted, the witness took his complaints about “this chaos and disorder” to Bosnian Serb army chief General Ratko Mladic and Karadzic at a meeting in the Sarajevo suburb of Lukavica in May 1992.
When Mladic heard about the huge scale of looting of Muslim and Croat homes taking place, he agreed that something had to be done immediately.
“He said it was essential to establish a central warehouse where all these stolen goods should be placed and then distributed to wounded Serb soldiers,” Davidovic told the court.
According to him, Karadzic’s reaction was similar. “He agreed with Mladic that the stolen items had to be put to a good use,” said Davidovic, adding that neither man had mentioned the possibility of arresting and disciplining those responsible for committing criminal acts.
Davidovic also told the court about a spring 1992 visit to Bijeljina, which had already been taken over by paramilitary units from Serbia under the command of Zeljko Raznatovic, the warlord known as Arkan.
The witness told the court that he saw scenes in Bijeljina similar to those he witnessed earlier in Sarajevo and Pale.
“Bosnian Serb police and paramilitaries would get into Muslim and Croat houses in the middle of the night. They would give [families] five or ten minutes to pack and then they would be taken to collection centres, where they would be thoroughly searched and stripped of all valuables, before being sent to the Muslim and Croat held territories,” the witness told the court.
After their owners were expelled, he said, these houses were first looted by RS police and paramilitary, and then “sold to Serb refugees who came to Bijeljina from other parts of Bosnia”.
Davidovic claims “the looting was organised and authorised” by the SDS leadership and that “the profit was divided into several parts – one the perpetrators kept for themselves, one part went to Arkan and one part went to Pale, to Karadzic, Krajisnik and their brothers, who acted as mediators”.
When asked by judges how he knew this in such detail, the witness replied that he had seen a document addressed to a local SDS official Vojkan Djokovic and signed by Krajisnik, in which the accused apparently instructs Djokovic to “encourage humane relocation of Muslim and Croat population from Bijeljina and that armed forces and police should not interfere”.
Davidovic also alleged that Djokovic had admitted that he was taking illegally obtained profit to Pale.
“He said it publicly on many occasions,” said Davidovic. “He never hid the fact that he was taking money to Krajisnik and Karadzic and their brothers.”
Davidovic told the court he had sent reports on all illegal activities he witnessed in RS at that time to interior minister Gracanin, and that he kept copies of the reports in his Belgrade apartment. But he claimed that in 1995, the Serb police entered his home with a search warrant and confiscated all his documents from Bosnia, including copies of those reports
The trial continues next week.
Merdijana Sadovic is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
