Tahirović responds to Stevandić: Are you the one from the Hague convictions and the unfortunate one who only suffered a "bruised brain"?

By: Murat Tahirović, President of the Association of Victims and Witnesses of Genocide

“The Serbian people hold the torch of freedom very high, and that is why we are a nuisance to them, and that is why there is so much pressure on the presidents of Serbia and RS, Aleksandar Vučić and Milorad Dodik, and what we are doing today will one day be taught in history,” said Nenad Stevandić, President of the National Assembly of Republika Srpska, for RTRs.

Unfortunately, this trio holds the torch of war, just as they did in the nineties. We should not forget that Dodik never voted against any decision of the assembly led by war criminal Momčilo Krajišnik, and Vučić, with his vengeful statements and inflammatory visits to BiH and RH, supported the convicted criminal policy of Slobodan Milošević.

Stevandić is perhaps the person most mentioned in all the judgments of the Hague Tribunal, as the commander of the Serbian Defense Forces - SOS, which committed horrific crimes in Banja Luka and Bosanska Krajina. What these three torchbearers did for the “Serbian cause,” the UN itself wants to be studied in schools and universities around the world – as the most horrific crime after World War II, and it will be studied in Serbia too – sooner or later. Unfortunately, for the Serbian people, the same people who fawned over Milošević are pursuing the same policy. Let's just hope the Serbian people don't learn how Milošević lost Greater Serbia and Kosovo, and you in the Serbian world, what little is left of Greater Serbia. And what do the dozens of Hague convictions say about our Stevandić – the Hague champion.

1. “The Trial Chamber concludes that the widespread campaign of violence, arrests, abuse, and dismissals from work, described above, constituted a widespread and systematic attack on the civilian population identified as Muslims and Croats in Banja Luka. Given the number of people affected by this campaign of violence and the role played jointly by civilian and military authorities, the Trial Chamber finds that this attack on the civilian population was both widespread and systematic. The Trial Chamber was also satisfied that the specific acts and omissions of the SOS, the Special Unit of the CSB Banja Luka police, the group that rode in the red van, and the Serbian police and military police, described above in the section containing factual findings, were part of that attack. Finally, given that it was a large-scale attack that repeatedly endangered the lives of Muslims and Croats in Banja Luka, the Trial Chamber concludes that the perpetrators knew that an attack was underway in Banja Luka and that their actions were part of that attack.”

2. “During the republican referendum on the independence of BiH, held on February 29 and March 1, 1992, the Serbian Defense Forces (SOS) blocked the municipal building in Banja Luka. SOS in Banja Luka was under the command of Nenad Stevandić, and it included many known criminals from Banja Luka.”

3. “The paramilitary group Serbian Defense Forces (SOS) under the command of Nenad Stevandić, a member of the ARK Crisis Staff. The man at the head of SOS, Nenad Stevandić, was also a member of the SDS, which was in direct contact with Radovan Karadžić, and the demands of SOS were readily implemented. The Trial Chamber was satisfied beyond a reasonable doubt that the SDS organized and directed the actions of SOS as one of the means of implementing the Strategic Plan. The criminal acts committed in Bosanska Krajina from April 1992 to the end of December 1992 were a direct consequence of the comprehensive Strategic Plan. Ethnic cleansing was not a byproduct of criminal activities, but rather the true goal and therefore an inseparable part of the Strategic Plan.”

4. The Trial Chamber took the position that the commission of crimes against non-Serbs by SOS in the period after April 3, 1992, was widespread and systematic. The Chamber notes that Župljanin, as head of the CSB, was aware of these crimes. The demands of SOS were identical to the demands of the SDS leadership in Pale, which included participants in the Joint Criminal Enterprise (JCE) Biljana Plavšić, Momčilo Krajišnik, and Radovan Karadžić. It was established that the leading members of the ARK Crisis Staff were also participants in that JCE.”

5. “The Trial Chamber found that among the perpetrators in Banja Luka were: (a) members of the 1st Krajina Corps under the command of Božidar Popović and members of the military police of the 1st Krajina Corps; (b) the local Crisis Staff; (c) the ARK Crisis Staff; (d) SOS; and (e) members of the police forces, including members of the Banja Luka Special Police Unit, CSB Banja Luka, SNB, as well as police officers from Prijedor, Sanski Most. The Trial Chamber found that these Serbian forces in Banja Luka, acting in concert, committed the criminal acts of deportation (point 9), forcible transfer as an inhumane act (point 10), and deportation and forcible transfer as an act of persecution (point 1), in order to achieve the common plan of the JCE.”

6. “The Appeals Chamber judgment further states: The Trial Chamber also found that SOS, like other paramilitary groups operating in ARK, was under the command and control of the VRS 'from the beginning of June 1992 onwards', which indicates that SOS did not operate under direct military control in the ARK territory at least until the end of May 1992. For these reasons, the Appeals Chamber concludes that Brđanin did not prove that no reasonable trier of fact could have found that the ARK Crisis Staff had a significant influence on SOS. After April 3, 1992, SOS, the Special Unit of the CSB Banja Luka police (after its establishment in May 1992), and a group of Serbs in a red van, whom many in Banja Luka feared, began to carry out attacks on Muslims and Croats and their property…”

I don't know how incompetent a prosecutor you have to be, or something worse, that for decades no one from the BiH Prosecutor's Office has taken all the evidence from the Hague Tribunal and prosecuted the leader of SOS for crimes. This is just a fraction of thousands of pieces of evidence from numerous final convictions.

If the prosecutors don't know, just as they don't know how to file indictments for denial, they should ask Joan Korner, who prepared two reports for them on inaction at the request of OSCE and ICTY. Joan Korner led key trials before the tribunal for Bosanska Krajina, in which the aggression of Serbia/FRY was also established.

Finally, Stevandić says in the interview: “We already know that over 40 countries do not accept the West's cliché of rewriting history. When you know that a great Russia recently had only seven votes, then you must know that this is already a victory for the Serbian people.”

This statement is reminiscent of pre-war black humor after a traffic accident when an eyewitness said that three were in a coma, and the fourth got off easily, “only” with a bruised brain. If the humor is authentic and that fourth person survived, perhaps that is the head of SOS.”