Serb
Volunteers Accused of further Crimes
Witness tells judges about Serb paramilitary
attack on Bosnian village in 1992.
By Denis Dzidic in The Hague
A protected witness in the trial of Vojislav Seselj
testified this week that Serb volunteers attacked his village, murdering
around 20 residents before imprisoning the rest.
Testifying in the Hague tribunal trial of Serb Radical
Party, SRS, leader Seselj, the witness said a group of volunteers led by
local man Vasilije Vidovic attacked the village of Ljesevo, killing some
20 civilians. He said that he was among the surviving villagers sent to
prison camps, where they were kept in harsh conditions and subjected to
forced labour.
Known only by the pseudonym VS 1055, the witness said
that the group of Serb volunteer fighters came to the Ilijas region in
central Bosnia in the early Nineties.
"I knew Vidovic very well from before the war. In
1991, he went to fight with the Yugoslav People's Army on the Croatian
front, and he came back with about 20 volunteers from Serbia who were
under his command," stated the witness.
The witness then drew a connection between Vidovic and
Seselj, saying that several years after the war, he saw the former serve
as the politician's bodyguard, in a report on a Republika Srpska, RS,
television station.
"There were riots in Belgrade and a mob wanted to
attack Seselj. I saw Vidovic there as one of Seselj's security guards.
He drew his gun to protect Seselj," said the witness.
Prosecutors charge Seselj with inciting Serbs to fight
Bosniaks and Croats as part of a "joint criminal enterprise" to force
non-Serbs out of parts of Croatia and Bosnia, and with encouraging the
creation of a homogenous "Greater Serbia".
Seselj is also accused of "recruiting and funding SRS
party volunteers" who allegedly committed crimes against non-Serbs in
Croatia and Bosnia.
According to VS 1055, ethnic tensions between Serbs
and Bosniaks in the Ilijas region near Sarajevo "reached a climax" in
May 1992, and the Serbs decided to form their own government - the
Serbian Autonomous Region, SAO, of Romanija.
"This effectively meant that all non-Serbs were fired
from their jobs and positions and replaced with Serbs," said the
witness.
Ilijas and the wider Sarajevo region were not the only
places affected, said the witness. He told the court that he saw a
report on the Sarajevo television station which said that forces
attached to Seselj and notorious Serb paramilitary leader Arkan had
taken over the northeastern town of Bijeljina.
"I remember there were bodies on the streets,"said the
witness.
Zeljko "Arkan" Raznatovic, whose "Tigers" are
suspected of committing numerous crimes during the 1992-95 conflict, was
murdered in Belgrade in January 2000.
According to the witness, many non-Serbs - himself
included - tried to leave SAO Romanija because they feared for their
lives. However, they were stopped by Serb police barricades.
"I managed to get my family out over a hill nearby,
not through the roads. I stayed behind, and on June 4 1992, the Serb
forces' attack on Ljesevo began," said the witness.
"There were no Bosniak fighters or any units inside
the village. However, the Serb forces attacked us with every type of
weapons - shells, grenades and infantry. A group of us hid inside a
basement of a neighbour nearby and the attack lasted several hours.
"When the attack finished, we heard a group of
Chetniks [Serb volunteers] outside the basement and were ordered to get
out and lie on the ground. I remember that Vidovic was in charge of
those men. They arrested us and took us away."
According to him, the detainees were first transferred
to the Iskra camp in Podlugovi and after a few months, to the Planjina
Kuca camp in Vogosca.
"In Iskra, we were subjected to terrible conditions.
There were 130 of us there, without water or anything to sleep on. In
August, they took us to Planjina Kuca. There we had water, however, we
were forced to work. They would take us to dig trenches or bury their
dead."
Seselj objected to the entire testimony of the
witness. He repeatedly called him a liar and was reprimanded several
times by the judges.
The accused then produced a signed statement from
Vidovic saying that although he had a group of fighters in the Ilijas
region, they were all "natives from that area".
"None of them were from Serbia," said the statement.
But the witness replied that he was sure of what he
saw and would be willing to come to the court again and "confront
Vidovic".
Seselj then presented the judges with the official
notebook of the group, which Vidovic kept personally, and which
contained a list of its fighters. The defendant vowed they were all from
the Ilijas region.
"Vidovic is also expected to appear as a defence
witness," said Seselj.
Seselj also challenged the witness's claim that as
there were no Bosniak fighters in Ljesevo, there was no need to attack
the village.
He read a statement from former general of the RS army
Dragan Josipovic which said that the Serb village of Odzaci near Ljesevo
was attacked by Bosniak forces a "month prior to the Serb retaliation on
Ljesevo".
"One of the directions from which the Bosniak forces
attacked Odzaci was Ljesevo," it said.
However, the witness dismissed the statement as a
"lie".
"We heard fighting somewhere, but it had nothing to do
with our village and we took no part in that," he said.
The witness also said that when he came back to the
village after the war, the Serbs who had remained said its mosques had
been destroyed by Vidovic and his men.
But Seselj rejected this claim.
"Vidovic's own sister is married to a former Libyan
diplomat in Belgrade who is a Muslim and his sister is now a Muslim as
well. I met all of them and they get on very well. How can you accuse
this kind of man of destroying a mosque?" he asked.
The witness said he only knew what he had heard "from
his neighbours".
When asked whether he ever saw Seselj in the Ilijas
region, the witness replied he had not. However, he said he saw him "on
television in 1993 or early 1994" when Seselj came to visit Ilijas and
made a speech.
The trial continues next week.
Denis Dzidic is an IWPR-trained reporter in The Hague. |