Official payments to paramilitaries who participated in war crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) showed that the heads of the State Security Service of Serbia, Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic, were responsible for murders and expulsions, the United Nations (UN) court found.
For at least two years, employees of the State Security Service (SDB) of the Ministry of Internal Affairs kept basic records of payments to personnel. About every two weeks they made a list of all the people receiving daily allowances and recorded the total amount of money paid to them.
On one of those lists, typed on a typewriter, there is the name of Nenad Bujosevic, next to whom the word ”Veliki” was added, which probably refers to his nickname Veliki Rambo. According to this list, during the second half of October 1995, Bujosevicreceived at least 16 daily allowances.
Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic were each sentenced to 15 years in prison and found guilty of participating in a joint criminal enterprise aimed at the violent and permanent removal of the non-Serb population from the territory of Croatia and BiH, and of being responsible for murders, deportations, inhumane acts and persecution.
Stanisic and Simatovic were key figures in the security apparatus of the Milosevic regime, which instilled fear. In addition to the fact that the crimes established by the first-instance verdict were confirmed at their retrial in 2021, the final verdict declared them responsible for a far wider pattern of crimes committed by Serbian forces during the wars of the 1990s.
It was established that they were also part of a joint criminal enterprise in which the senior political, military and police leadership of Serbia participated, as well as the leaders of the Bosnian Serbs and rebel Serbs in Croatia, along with Milosevic, the President of the Republika Srpska (RS) Radovan Karadzic, the leader of the Croatian Serbs Goran Hadzic and others.
Deviating from the usual judgments handed down by the Hague Tribunal, which were based on military orders, diaries or records, or on political decisions and statements, the major part of the final verdict against Stanisic and Simatovic was based on tracking money trails – tracking people through payrolls of the SDB, like the one with Nenad Bujosevic‘s name.
Jovana Kolaric from the Youth Initiative for Human Rights explains that Stanisic‘s and Simatovic‘s activities “had to be secret or at least as little visible as possible” due to their position as officials of the SDB of Serbia “which, according to the official narrative, did not participate in the war”.
“In the case of Stanisic and Simatovic, there were no direct orders, as is usual in the case of tried high-ranking members of the military and police. Here, the connection between the paramilitary units and the authorities of the Serbian state had to be hidden,” Kolaric points out.
“In this sense, pay lists are very significant because they are a rare written trace that connects what happened on the battlefield with the State Security, that is, with the organs of the State of Serbia,” she adds.
“Common criminal goal of eliminating non-Serbs”
By the verdict of 2021, Stanisic and Simatovic were found guilty of helping members of the Special Operations Unit (JSO) of the SDB who committed crimes in the area of Bosanski Samac in 1992.
The verdict concluded that Stanisic and Simatovic “contributed to the achievement of a common criminal goal by organizing training for members of the Unit (JSO) and local Serbian forces in the center of Pajzos and their subsequent engagement during the occupation of the municipality of Bosanski Samac in April 1992.”, Detektor reports.
E.Dz.
