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Franko Simatovic was accused in court of commanding the Red Berets. Photo: MICT.

The witness, whose identity was protected, testified at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Tuesday that the commander-in-chief of the Red Berets, who sent part unit to participate in seizing the Bosanski Samac of Bosnia in 1992, was defendant Franko Simatovic.

The witness’s written statement and previous testimony suggest that he was an eyewitness to the murders of several Bosniaks by a group of Red Berets members from Serbia led by Slobodan Miljkovic, also known as Lugar, in the village of Crkvina, near Bosanski Samac, at the beginning of May 1992.

According to the witness, “between five and seven Muslims” were shot in Crkvina. However, according to the charges against Stanisic and Simatovic at least 16 were killed there.

The former chief of the Serbian State Security Service (SDB), Jovica Stanisic, and his former assistant, Simatovic, are being retried for the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Croatia.

On Tuesday, the witness testified behind closed doors in order for his identity to be protected, but prosecutor Edward Russo read a summary of his statement during an open part of the hearing prior to his testimony.

According to the summary, the witness was a member of “several Serb units, including the Red Berets and the Special Operations Unit of the Serbian SDB”.

The witness said that Serbian Interior Ministry instructors trained him at Red Berets camps in Serbia and Croatia.

While he was being trained at Pajzos in Croatia, he said he saw Simatovic “several times”.

He said Simatovic was “the commander of the Special Purposes Brigade of the Serbian Interior Ministry” – the official name for the Red Berets.

Simatovic, dressed in camouflage uniform and wearing a red beret, gave instructions concerning the upcoming attack on Bosanski Samac to Red Berets members, the witness among them, in Pajzos in April 1992.

He told them to leave their identification documents behind prior to departing for a “very difficult assignment”, the witness said.

The witness and other Red Berets members were transported to the town by helicopter. During the seizure of Bosanski Samac they collaborated with the Yugoslav People’s Army).

In his written statement, the witness described having seen some Red Berets members, who were accompanied by members of the local Territorial Defence force, beat captured non-Serb civilians in a detention facility next to the Internal Affairs Secretariat building in Bosanski Samac on two occasions between April 17 and July 31, 1992.

The prosecutors allege that Stanisic and Simatovic’s crimes were committed during the execution of a joint criminal enterprise aimed at permanently and forcibly removing Croats and Bosniaks from large parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to achieve Serb domination.

According to the prosecutors’ allegations, the joint criminal enterprise was led by then Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.

Stanisic and Simatovic both pleaded not guilty in December 2015 after the appeals chamber of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia overturned their acquittal in their first trial.

The appeals chamber ruled that there were serious legal and factual errors when Stanisic and Simatovic were initially acquitted of war crimes in 2013, and ordered the case to be retried and all the evidence and witnesses reheard in full by new judges.

The trial continues on Wednesday.