Police insider testifies at Kosovo Six trial

Police insider testifies at Kosovo Six trial

Testifying at the trial of the six Serbian officials charged with crimes in Kosovo, former police chief from Kosovska Mitrovica Ljubinko Cvetić said that the Joint Command, headed by the accused Nikola Šainović, issued “directives, orders and decisions”.

The military and police in Kosovo complied with them. The witness said that on July 22, 1998, he and the other chiefs of local police had been told at a meeting in Priština that “it has been decided at the highest level” to set up the Joint Command.

Apart from Šainović, two other accused were in the Joint Command: Nebojša Pavkovic and Sreten Lukić. The witness did not mention Vladimir Lazarević, although the indictment lists him as a member of the body. Cvetić had been granted full protective measures – pseudonym and the use of voice and image altering devices, but before the start of his testimony he decided not to avail himself of the protection.

At the session yesterday, the prosecutor presented an order issued by the Joint Command to “reinforce with the armed non-Šiptar population” the regular military and police forces in the action in Drenica in late March 1999. The witness says that the term “non-Serb population” was a synonym for local Serbs, assigned to specific military and police formations – Military Territorial Units and the Reserve Police Squads.

About 6,000 local Serbs were part of the police, Cvetić says. As members of the Reserve Police Squads, they had the same weapons as other reserve police, but did not wear full police uniforms. Many prosecution witnesses identified armed local Serbs as the perpetrators of murders, expulsions, mistreatment and robbing the Kosovo Albanians. The witnesses often found it difficult to describe accurately how they were dressed and to identify their uniforms.

Describing the structure of the police in Kosovo, the witness says the police department in Mitrovica he commanded was responsible to the Staff of the Interior Ministry, headed by one of the accused, Sreten Lukić. This was so from the witness’s arrival in Mitrovica. All seven police department chiefs in Kosovo had to report twice daily on the police activities in their areas to Lukić.

Cvetić testified about the presence of several special police units in Kosovo until 16 April 1999, when he was replaced. He says that the Special Operations Units, Special Anti-Terrorist Units, Special Police Units and Operative and Pursuit groups were active in Kosovo.

His testimony will continue Friday.