Croatian Army Did Not Stop Arson and Theft

With arriving information about arson from the field, Lausic warned his superiors that measures need to be taken to stop crime.

The former head of the Croatian Military Police, Mate Lausic, testified on Tuesday in The Hague, at the trial of the three Croatian generals accused of committing crimes in the police and military liberation operation “Storm”. He said that data arrived which indicated of arson and pillaging on the field, and he started warning his superiors that measures should be taken to stop crime in reports that he wrote, which he explained, he was not obligated to write.

On August 9, 1995, he sent a report to the Minister of Defence at the time, Gojko Susak, the head of the main command Zvonimir Cervenko, and other high officials of the intelligence system, and warned of the oversights made by Croatian Army commanders in stopping arson and pillaging, and called upon them to, via the chain of command, take action to stop it. He then explained that the aim of the report was to shift the responsibility to a higher level.

Perpetrators of crimes avoided military police

He warned the head of the main command that the chain of command was not functioning, and that measures need to be taken from their authority, said Laucic to the judges, about his communication with general Cervenko.

Laucic said that after Operation “Storm”, in agreement with general Cervenko and minister Susak, he himself gave an order on August 9 that the military police units withdraw from battle actions, and be redirected to carrying out military police functions on the field, and were distributed at various control points.

However, continued Lausic, with time it proved to be inefficient, because the perpetrators bypassed the checkpoints, going through other routes which were sometimes even full of landmines. He justified the inefficiency of the military police with the claims that there were too few people for the large area that they had to cover, and that it was declared that civilian authority had started to function, and that it was impossible to close off the area.

Susak called Cervenko to bring the army into order

Lausic described that on August 2, 1995, before Operation “Storm”, minister Susak warned Croatian Army commanders in the war hall of the Ministry of Defence, that they are personally responsible for the behaviour of their subordinates. He said that he was a witness to the meeting between Susak and Cervenko in the Ministry of Defence when Susak warned Cervenko to “bring his army into order”. “What is your army doing” said Susak to Cervenko, according to Lausic.

As evidence, the prosecution presented a letter from the assistant Minister of Internal Affairs, Josko Moric, dated August 18, 1995, in which he warned of the arson and pillaging which was mostly done by people wearing Croatian Army uniforms, and that he issued an order to police officials on the field for cooperation with the military police for those acts to be stopped. In that letter, Moric wrote that the arson and pillaging will not be investigated. When he was asked who brought that decision, Lausic answered that he did not know.

“I did not have the information on who issued the order that something not be processed” said Lausic.

He ended his testimony with the conclusion that “a commander is pathetic if his army is disciplined by the military police”. The prosecution announced that they will end their main questioning of the witness on Wednesday. They announced that the cross-examination by the defence of generals Ante Gotovina, Ivan Cermak and Mladen Markac will last between four to five days, because one of the most important prosecution witnesses is in question.