Serbian State Security ‘Didn’t Help Rebel Croatian Serbs’

A protected witness told the retrial of Jovica Stanisic and Franko Simatovic at the Mechanism for International Criminal Tribunals in The Hague on Wednesday that the Serbian State Security Service (SDB) was not involved in the so-called 'Log Revolution' that saw Serbs rebel against the Croatian authorities in 1990.

The witness, who was only identified as male and a member of the Serbian Democratic Party, lived in Croatia at the time.

He told the UN court that the Serbian SDB also did not help set up a military training centre for rebel Croatian Serbs in Golubic, near their stronghold in the town of Knin in Croatia's Krajina region, before the war broke out in 1991.

He said that after Milan Babic, then president of the Knin municipality, declared a state of war on Radio Knin on August 17, 1990, local Croatian Serbs became anxious and started to organise themselves for their own security.

"Nobody ever told me that the SDB was involved in the Log Revolution and I maintain that nobody from the SDB ever commanded a single unit in the territory of Krajina at the time of the Log Revolution, nor did we receive any assistance whatsoever in that period from anyone," he insisted.

The Log Revolution saw Serbs in the Knin area set up roadblocks using logs as part of their resistance to the Croatian authorities.

Stanisic, the former chief of the Serbian SDB, and Simatovic, former commander of the SDB-run Special Operations Unit, are charged with having been protagonists in a joint criminal enterprise led by then Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic, aimed at permanently and forcibly removing Croats and Bosniaks from large parts of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina to achieve Serb domination.

Stanisic and Simatovic were acquitted in...