A Reluctant Witness
Former Bosnian Serb justice minister suggests wartime leadership was fractured and short of information.
A Reluctant Witness
Former Bosnian Serb justice minister suggests wartime leadership was fractured and short of information.
The trial of former Bosnian Serb leader Momcilo Krajisnik heard further testimony this week from Momcilo Mandic, the former Republika Srpska justice minister, appearing as a reluctant witness on behalf of the prosecution.
Amid speculation that he himself might soon face indictment for war crimes, Mandic spoke in court about the wartime Bosnian Serb leadership and Republika Srpska’s notorious prison camps, and discussed recorded intercepts of his own telephone conversations from the time.
He was also obliged to confirm a statement he made in a previous interview with prosecutors, in which he explicitly named Krajisnik amongst those who took part in pre-war negotiations on the division of Bosnia.
Prosecutors and judges this week asked Mandic a series of very direct questions about the prison camps set up throughout Republika Srpska in 1992, including the notorious Omarska and Keraterm facilities.
According to the indictment against Krajisnik, thousands of Bosnian Muslim and Croat civilians – including their political, business and religious leaders – were detained at these camps, where they became victims of beatings, sexual assaults and murders.
His answers on the subject were often contradictory and one occasion Judge Alphons Orie accused him of being “evasive”.
Asked about the leadership of Republika Srpska during the war, Mandic claimed the fact the leaders were based in the small ski resort of Pale, some 30 kilometres from Sarajevo, meant they were very isolated.
Very little information on events in other parts of Bosnia – including the Prijedor municipality which was home to Omarska and Keraterm – actually got through, he said, because it was difficult to travel around the country in wartime.
And he claimed the region of Bosnia under Serb control was in fact run almost solely by local war presidencies and crisis staffs.
But when Orie confronted Mandic with the testimonies of previous witnesses, he admitted that leaders based in Pale often went to other parts of Republika Srpska to meet with local Serb Democratic Party leaders.
Mandic also told Orie that to the best of his knowledge, a state of war was never declared in Republika Srpska. An imminent threat of war was declared in 1992, he said, but as far as he knew Karadzic decided not to declare all-out war.
If true, this might indicate that the Bosnian Serb leadership made a conscious effort to avoid the need to comply with the international customs and laws that apply in wartime.
Prosecutors also asked Mandic about a number of intercepted telephone conversations from 1992. In one, dated July 10, he was heard talking to senior Bosnian Croat official Branko Kvesic about plans to divide Bosnia into two parts – one Serb, one Croat.
Musing over what to do with the remaining Muslim section of the population, Mandic was heard saying, “[We should] set up an airlift with Turkey, brother, and let them all go.”
Mandic, who had earlier told the court he “was never against having a multiethnic state”, dismissed the conversation as “informal chit-chat”. But he confirmed that in tone, it did echo the official policies of Bosnian Serb and Croat leaders at the time.
At the end of the week, Mandic failed to disguise his tears as Orie ruled that he should be allowed to return home to Belgrade for the weekend to “recharge his batteries” in preparation for next week’s cross-examination by defence lawyers.
In March last year, the United States publicly accused Mandic of ordering the ethnic cleansing of non-Serbs during the Bosnian war. And Hague prosecutor Alan Tieger acknowledged last week that Mandic is under investigation for war crimes, and declined to rule out the possibility that he could face a tribunal indictment in the future.
The international community’s High Representative in Bosnia Paddy Ashdown also accused Mandic in March last year of financing top fugitive suspect Radovan Karadzic. In an operation dubbed “Balkan Vice”, designed to cripple Karadzic’s support network, Mandic’s assets were frozen and he was banned from entering the United States and the European Union.
Mandic is also wanted by the Bosnian authorities for alleged fraud. Tribunal spokespersons have refused to comment on rumours that he was given safe passage to The Hague and a guarantee that he would not be extradited to Bosnia once his testimony is over.
Mandic’s Sarajevo lawyer Dusko Tomic has been allowed to attend court for the duration of his client’s testimony.
Some tribunal insiders claim it is no coincidence that the prosecution has insisted on calling Mandic to the witness stand at this stage in proceedings.
According to the tribunal’s completion strategy, all war crimes investigations have to be completed by the end of this year. And if prosecutors wish to indict Mandic, they have only limited time left to do so.
It is possible, on the other hand, that the completion strategy could in fact work in Mandic’s favour.
According to a related amendment to the tribunal’s Rules of Procedure and Evidence which came into effect in April this year, only indictments concerning “the most senior leaders” will now be confirmed. Although Mandic was a high-ranking Bosnian Serb official during the war, it’s not clear whether he fits the category of “senior leader”.
Mandic is expected back in The Hague next week to undergo cross-examination by Krajisnik’s defence counsel.
Merdijana Sadovic is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
