SETimes.comLandmark war crimes trial under way in Serbia
28/12/2005
The trial of six men charged with war crimes committed in the Bosnian town of Zvornik in 1992 marks the first time a case has been transferred from the UN tribunal to a Serbian court.
By Davor Konjikusic for Southeast European Times in Belgrade – 28/12/05
The first ever case to be transferred from the UN war crimes tribunal to a Serbian court got under way at the end of the November. Six people are on trial in what many consider a key test of the Serbian judiciary's ability to handle war crimes cases.
Branko Grujic, the 61-year-old former mayor of the northeastern Bosnian town of Zvornik, has been charged in connection with the 1992 slayings of at least 22 Muslims and the expulsion of 1,822 others. Charged alongside him are former territorial defence commander Branko Popovic, 57, and four members of the Yellow Hornets paramilitary gang -- Dragan Slavkovic, 43, Ivan Korac, 33, Sinisa Filipovic, 31, and Dragutin Dragicevic, 35. All have pleaded not guilty.
According to the indictment, Grujic and Popovic failed to prevent the Yellow Hornets from carrying out a campaign of murder, rape and other abuse against Muslim civilians after Serb forces took the ethnically mixed town of Zvornik in April 1992. The local Serb Democratic Party leadership, aided by paramilitaries, conducted a systematic campaign of deportations and property confiscation against the Muslim population in the town, as well as in surrounding villages.
Grujic, who once told journalists after the Zvornik ethnic cleansing that "there were never any mosques in the town," has testified that he was unaware of the abuse. As president of the interim municipal government, Grujic says, he only learned two or three days after the fact that men had been singled out, and that Zvornik police told him they would be released to go to Serbia.
Witnesses in the case are receiving protection in line with the requirements of The Hague tribunal. Some will have their identity protected during the trial proceedings, with initials used in place of their names. This is a practice that is being applied in Serbia for the very first time. The main concern for the court is the possibility that journalists might reveal the identities of protected witnesses, as recently happened in Croatia. Penalties have been set for anyone who does so.
"The situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) is still fairly serious and tense, and it is hard to expect that whoever testifies about everything that they know … can return to BiH and move freely there," Serbian media quoted Mehmed Pragan, a journalist with the daily Slobodna Bosna as saying.