Drljaca on the right
According to an IFOR source, Drljaca was appointed directly by Radovan Karadzic to command the police force of five municipalities in the Prijedor area. he reportedly led a brutal military police-type unit during Operation Storm [in Croatia], which gave him a bad reputation among young soldiers and police. From 1992-1995, DrljacaÕs police force continued to persecute non-Serbs, and there is ample evidence to suggest his direct involvement in the ÒdisappearanceÓ of the Catholic priest, Father Tomislav Matanovic, and his parents in September 1995.
After the signing of the Dayton agreement, Drljaca personally obstructed freedom of movement and the return of refugees and displaced persons, going so far as to hand out weapons to the local population to threaten returnees.
DrljacaÕs immediate supervisor is Minister of the Interior Dragan Kijac who is based in Bjeljina, the seat of the Ministry of the Interior and the Republica Srpska police. In June 1996, an IFOR source told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, ÒDrljaca has complete power, maintaining control through the police and the military. [Mayor] Stakic is under DrljacaÕs thumb...Stakic wonÕt meet with me on certain subjects unless Drljaca is present.Ó The source claimed that Drljaca was Òcontrolled by PaleÓ, though limiting or granting him funds, calling him to Pale frequently, and controlling information passed to him.
DrljacaÕs cooperation with the U.N. mission, and more recently, with IPTF has been minimal, but there was surprisingly little international attention to his behavior until an altercation with IFOR in September 1996 (described later in this report). He remained police chief for nine months following the signing of the Dayton agreement, despite his history and his numerous violations of the Dayton agreement, which are detailed below (see Section C: ÒViolations of the Dayton Agreement by the Prijedor Authorities, The Role of the PoliceÓ).
An IPTF report dated November 2, 1996, which was given by a third party to Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, states, ÒThe impression by Prijedor IPTF, IFOR and ECMM, is that Drljaca is clearly wielding power and influence in Prijedor. The question at hand is whether this influence extends to the local police. From the sightings listed above [in the IPTF report] and the information of DrljacaÕs new position with the Ministry, it appears to be the case. The fact that Drljaca is traveling in police vehicles gives further credence to this conclusion.Ó rather than being dismissed from his post, Drljaca was actually promoted to special assistant to the minister of the interior, Dragan Kijac. Drljaca describes his new role as Òsecurity advisor,Ó according to IPTF. Drljaca has also to himself as Òlogistics officer.Ó According to information given to Human Rights Watch/Helsinki in January 1997 by an IPTF source, Drljaca is still the de facto chief of police, and Òcontrols all police issues.Ó He also caries an illegal weapon and is accompanied by armed body guards at all time.
At a November 29 IFOR press conference, IPTF spokesman Alexander Ivanko acknowledged that Drljaca had been seen four times by IPTF, and that IPTF Prijedor believed that he was still in operational control of the Prijedor police. Ivanko stated ÒWeÕve raised this with minister Kijac, he has reassured us -- IÕm not sure we can believe his reassurances -- but he has reassured us that Simo Drljaca no longer has any influence in the area of Prijedor. As far as we know, Simo Drljaca nevertheless is an assistant to Minister Kijac, in charge of logistics.Ó Drljaca was also seen in December 1996 by IPTF in an apparent police function.
IFOR sources have confirmed to Human Rights Watch/Helsinki, and IPTF sources strongly suspect, that Drljaca is heavily involved in organized crime.
Simo Drljaca: Wartime Activities
According to Kozarski Vjesnik, a Serbian-controlled newspaper in Prijedor:
The man (Simo Drljaca), who the Serbian Democratic party of the Opstina Prijedor put in charge of forming the Serbian police after half a year of illegal work, had done his job so well that in thirteen police stations, 1,775 well-armed persons were waiting to undertake any difficult duty in the time which was coming. Between April 29 and 30, 1992, he directed the takeover of power [by the Serbs] which was successfully achieved in only thirty minutes without any shots fired. The assembly of the Srpske Opstine Prijedor, at the end of March last year [1992], appointed him chief of the public security station (i.e. in charge of the secret police). He was in charge of this job during the most demanding period and remained in the position until January 1993. These days he has been appointed the vice-minister of Internal affairs of the Serbian Republic.
In an interview with Kozarski Vjesnik on April 9, 1993, Drljaca stated:
In the collecting centers of Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje more than 6,000 informative conversations were held. Of these people, 1,503 Muslim and Croats were transferred to the Manjaca camp.
Drljaca did not explain with the other 4,497. Speaking to a journalist about prisoners in the Manjaca camp, he said with regret, ÒInstead of them getting their just punishment, we were forced to release them by the international powers.Ó
The secret and civil police, both controlled by Drljaca and the Ministry of the Interior, Òwould interrogate, torture and kill camp inmates and be in charge of the psychological part of the operation,Ó according to the U.N. Commission of Experts. ÒThe most brutal functions of the sluzba bezbjednosti (state security) personnel could alternatively be carried out with the paramilitary units,Ó among them the Red Berets, a paramilitary unit possibly under the direct command of Radovan Karadzic. A visit to Omarska by Human Rights Watch/Helsinki (then Helsinki Watch) representatives in August 1992 confirmed that access to the camps was granted by local police authorities, not by the military, although there was considerable collaboration between the two.
As Drljaca told Kozarski Vjesnik, ÒThey (the police forces, including the secret services) carried out my orders and the orders of the CBS (ÒCenter Sluzbene bezbjednosti,Ó or Public security Center) Banja Luka and the Minister of Interior ... the cooperation was excellent with the Army of republica srpska and with the officers of that army. The cooperation was manifested in the joint cleansing of the terrain of traitors, joint work at the checkpoints, a joint intervention a group against disturbances of public order and in fighting terrorist groups.Ó
After local Serbs took control of the Prijedor municipality in the spring of 1992, according to the U.N. Commission, Drljaca informed all non-Serbian police officers that they would have to abide by ÒSerbian lawÓ, display ÒSerbian emblemsÓ, and sign a declaration of contest to abide by the regulations set by their Bosnian Serb counterparts. Few signed, and no non-Serbs remained in the police force for more than the first ten to fifteen days. Soon they were among those specifically targeted for prosecution. One former Omarska detainee claims that on one occasion, twenty non-serbian policemen from Prijedor were executed in the camp.
It has been alleged that Drljaca was one of those responsible for deciding who would be taken to the Omarska camp. A survivor of the Omarska and Manjaca camps and former acquaintance of DrljacaÕs told Human Rights watch/Helsinki on November 16, 1996 that he saw Drljaca a number of times in the Omarska camp in 1992. His daughter, seeking his release, had called Drljaca, who checked a list while they were on the phone and confirmed that her father was on the list for Omarska. ÒSorry,Ó he said, ÒthereÕs nothing I can do for him.Ó
Peter Maas of The Washington Post further describes DrljacaÕs role:
The tour of Omarska and Trnopolje was conducted by Simo Drljaca, who controls the camps and is the police chief from Prijedor, the nearest town. Drljaca flatly denied the charges of mistreatment, torture and executions. ÒInterrogation is being done the same way as it is done in America and England,Ó he said. Asked about the skeletal state of many at Omarska, he said that they were not underfed. ÒThey are not skeletons,Ó he boasted.
When Chuck Sudetic of the New York Times asked Drljaca why the prisoners were so thin, Drljaca replied that the Muslims were naturally thin because they did not eat pork and fasted each year during Ramadan. ÒThatÕs the way the Muslim nation is,Ó he said. ÒHave you read the Koran?Ó Drljaca insisted that none of the prisoners had been physically mistreated and that reports of killings were untrue, and that any man who had died in the camp had died of war wounds. He also told Sudetic that all the investigators were lawyers.
In August 1992, Sudetic reported: ÒThe most powerful warlord in the Prijedor area is the local police chief, Simo Drljaca, who runs the militia and has reportedly had serious clashes with local army officers.Ó In an apparent effort to distance himself from the atrocities being committed in the concentration camps, Karadzic told the Times that Drljaca was responsible for the inhumane conditions in the camps under his control, which included Omarska and Keraterm.Ó
Sudetic reported: ÒUndercutting denials by Serbian leaders that there is no official policy behind the forced expulsion of Muslims and Croats, Mr. Drljaca speaks frankly about how to ÔcleanseÕ the undesirables. ÔWith their mosques, you must not just break the minarets,Õ he said, ÔYouÕve got to shake up the foundations because that means they cannot build another. Do that, and theyÕll want to go. TheyÕll just leave by themselves.ÕÓ
In 1992, Drljaca had insisted to journalist Roy Gutman of Newsday that no one was killed at Omarska, and that only two prisoners had died between may 25 and mid-August, both of Ònatural causes.Ó Another forty-nine Òdisappeared,Ó including the former lord mayor of Prijedor, Muhamed Cehajic, and were presumed dead, Drljaca told Gutman. But Simo Drljaca later told a foreign visitor that Òin legal terminology, we use that term Ôdisappeared.Õ Maybe some who ÔdisappearedÕ died in Ôdisappearing.ÕÓ
In the Bosnian Serb version of events, detainees were interrogated for four days and then deported -- voluntarily. Drljaca told Newsday that the 800 detainees who Òorganized the whole thingÓ (the alleged Òconspiracy to overthrow the SerbsÓ), among them rich Bosniaks who allegedly financed the Bosniak SDA political party, were taken to Manjaca Òto await criminal trial.Ó Taken with them were 600 people who reportedly commanded units of Bosniak and Bosnian Croat resistance. The remaining 1,900 persons [of the approximately 3000 people Drljaca admitted to arresting and taking to Omarska] were found ÒinnocentÓ and taken immediately to Trnopolje, which officials, including Drljaca, refereed to as Òa transit camp,Ó but was actually a deportation center.
In fact, relatively few interrogations were conducted before transfers to the various camps, and only a handful of detainees had ever carried arms, according to GutmanÕs extensive and detailed reporting.
A survivor of Keraterm and Trnopolje said in November 1992:
On July 17, 1992, at 5:30 a.m., Simo Drljaca, chief of police, ordered my second arrest. Three civilian policemen and a driver took me in a police car first to the police station and then to the town camp ÔKeratermÕ ... ÔKeratermÕ was a plant built to produce tiles and thermic products. It was never opened, and its plant floors and depots were turned into a notorious camp enclosed by wire fence, well guarded, with machine-gun nests and a huge dredger which overlooked prisoners like a ghost. Between 850 and 1000 people would be brought to the camp daily, depending on the extent of ÔcleansingÕ in the town and its surroundings...I spent 53 days in ÔKeratermÕ and in the prison hospital. I watched people being beaten up and murdered...
Another survivor reports that:
around June 20th the ethnic cleansing of the villages of Mitric and Carevac was carried out. Serbs simply took away the people who were at their homes or worked in the field. They killed some of them, mainly young men, placed others on the buses and transferred some of them to ÒKeratermÓ, while the rest of them were allegedly taken to Omarska. In ÒKeratermÓ some twenty guards readily waited for them with special beating implements like baseball bats, chains, battery cables, and extremely flexible metal hoses with a metal ball on the end. They would take them in groups of ten, and they did not watch where they hit them. Especially brutal was Dusan Knezevic, called Duca, who pierced some peopleÕs thighs with a bayonet...[One night] they started shooting with automatic guns...we realized what had happened in the morning. ÔAutotransportÕ [sic] FAP 1620 trailer truck came in the morning. A certain Pero whom I knew from earlier drove it. The guards took some people from our sleeping-room and ordered [them] to load bodies on the truck. there were ninety-eight dead and sixty-four wounded..the following night, July 25-26th, we again heard machine-gun fire in the same room...I counted. Exactly twenty-one shots.
Draljaca finally escorted Peter Maas and some other journalists to Keraterm, where he refused to allow them to see the building where the prisoners had actually been held, and then to Omarska and Trnopolje, where the journalists met starving men who spoke with them in hushed toned about the terror of the camps.
An IFOR source recently told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki that Drljaca Òran the camp at Omarska...was appointed directly by Karadzic...[and is] up to the Hague tribunal.Ó The source added that Drljaca owns the ÔAeroclubÕ restaurant and a perfume shop in Prijedor.
Simo Drljaca and the Prijedor ÒMafiaÓ
According to two IFOR sources assigned to the Prijedor area with access to intelligence information, and IPTF sources, Drljaca also heads a well-organized crime ring. The police reportedly Òtake a cutÓ on all major financial transactions in the town, and some local businesses are required to pay Drljaca Òprotection money.Ó Local Serbs and non-Serbs alike fear Drljaca and his men.
IFOR confirmed that Drljaca controls the local Property Commission and the local Commission on Displaced Persons and Refugees, and therefore controls housing in the Prijedor municipality. ÒIf you know Simo, you ca get a house,Ó one IFOR officer told Human Rights Watch/Helsinki. ÒIf you donÕt, you can pay him. Everyone in Prijedor knows this.Ó This source also stated that Drljaca was involved in the distraction of over ninety Bosniak houses in the village of Hambarine, outside Prijedor, in October 1996.
The Boston Globe confirmed through Western sources in Prijedor who had talked to local residents about Drljaca that ÒIn addition to controlling officials from the mayor on down, Drljaca is alleged by residents to have demanded kickbacks for apartments and police protection of businesses. Locally, his name is ÔMr. Ten PercentÕ for the rate he demands form the area businesses and restaurants...Bosnian Serbs who donÕt toe the party line allege they had to pay the police to avoid being evicted from their apartmentsÓ and have been called into the police station where they were threatened by Drljaca in Òinformative talksÓ (interrogations) after speaking with the Western officials.
Ranko Mijic: Acting Chief of Police Mijic served as deputy chief of police until the 1996 removal of Simo Drljaca as police chief in Prijedor, at which time he became acting police chief. When IPTF Prijedor asked Mijic recently about the persons indicted for war crimes on the police force, Mijic said he did not know them and said that the local police need permission from the minister of the interior to provide such information. However, Human Rights Watch/Helsinki viewed two documents in Prijedor which have been signed by two of the indicted persons. The first, dated July 11 1996, was signed by Nedeljko Timarac. The second document, dated October 22, 1996, was signed by Miroslav Kvocka. Mijic took control of the Prijedor police in September 1996. It is therefore evident that at least one of these two indictees was still serving on the police force until October 22, 1996, and had thus been under MijicÕs authority for at least one month.
According to Nusret Sivac, a survivor of Trnopolje, Ranko Mijic was chief interrogator for all the camps in Prijedor area. He was responsible for the death lists and issued death sentences in Keraterm and Omarska. according to Sivac, ÒMijic is the biggest war criminal after Drljaca.Ó Before the war, he was head of the Division of Criminology for the police department.
Zivko Jovic: Acting Deputy Chief of Police Zivko Jovic was formerly head of the Criminal Investigations Division of the Prijedor police department, and according to an IPTF source, owns the ÒCalypsoÓ coffee shop behind the IPTF police station. According to a local source, Jovic was a military policeman during the war and was responsible for war crimes. An independent testimony from a survivor of Keraterm and Trnopolje names Zivko Jovic as one of those responsible for the atrocities committed in those camps. According to Nusret Sivac, a survivor of the concentration camps, ÒJovic Zivko was an interrogator/inspector in Keraterm camp.Ó
Grozdan Mutic: Head of State Security Mutic was assigned to the post of chief of state security for the Prijedor municipality in 1993, and according to an IFOR source, receives his directives from Dragan Kijac, minister of the interior, not from Simo Drljaca. State security officers have intelligence and internal investigation duties. His brother, Rade Mutic, is an extremist who is the director of the local television station and is rabidly anti-Bosniak, according to international sources in Prijedor. His other brother, Mile Mutic, was the editor of the local newspaper Kozarski Vjesnik, and along with Rade, used the written and spoken media to propagate anti-Bosniak propaganda and to fuel ethnic hatred and violence throughout the war.
Milomir Stakic: mayor of Prijedor Molomir Stakic, working as a member of the ÒCrisis Committee,Ó was directly involved in setting up the infamous camps around Prijedor, according to the U.N. Commission of Experts. Ed Vulliamy reported in The Guardian in February 1996: ÒDr. [Milan] KovacevicÕs boss in 1992 was the ÔpresidentÕ, or mayor, of Prijedor, Milomir Stakic...And he was introduced to us as the man endowed with the authority to grant, or refuse, access to Omarska.Ó
In an interview in August 1992, Mayor Stakic provided the following statement:
We have tried to get the other side to live in peace with us. Our problems are with the extremists, not the population. We are trying to get Muslims not to leave the area, but to stay and live with us, but they want to go to Croatia and Germany, or back to Bosnia [sic], while the extremists bring weapons into the area, kill the Serbian people and commit appalling atrocities. There are no camps -- there are only transit centers where people are taken for their own protection. Others are people who want to leave and others are assisting them.
Stakic resigned from his post in 1993, but was reinstalled as mayor on direct orders from Karadzic in February 1996. he is under investigation by the ICTY, and an indictment for the war crimes is expected by the local observers in Prijedor and a source close to the ICTY, but it is by no means certain he will be indicted any time soon.
Stakic, a medical doctor, and currently director of the community health center in Prijedor, is according to IFOR sources close to Drljaca and serves as the de facto head of the local SDS. He is allegedly involved with Drljaca in local mafia activities, and has knowledge of the ÒdisappearanceÓ of Father Tomislav Matanovic.
Internal monitors in Bosnia and Herzegovina report that Mayor Satkic has repeatedly failed to comply with provisions of the Dayton agreement. According to IFOR, Mayor Stakic has been involved in organizing mob attacks and in provoking violent incidents through announcements on the radio. For example, on June 25, 1996, Mayor Stakic issued an inflammatory statement on Radio Prijedor, warning of fanatical Muslims entering Prijedor and calling on listeners to defend the town. The group identified as Òradical MuslimsÓ was in fact an international womenÕs peace group (See section, ÒObstruction of Freedom of Movement by Prijedor Authorities,Ó for details of incident). after the Òdefense,Ó Radio Prijedor announced that Òa group of Muslim extremists tried to penetrate by force...which demonstrates a provocation by the international community and a violation of SrpskaÕs [Republica SrpskaÕs] sovereignty.Ó
In October 1996, ninety-six Bosniak houses and two mosques were blown up in the village of Hambarine, near Prijedor. The evidence suggests that the authorities were involved in this destruction (see details in section titled ÒDestruction of Property to Prevent RepatriationÓ). Stakic told an IFOR officer that he had opposed the bombings and wanted to leave his job -- that he did not plan to run for re-election. According to UNHCR reports, however, prior to the destruction of housing in Hambarine, UNHCR provided Stakic with a list of the displaced persons who wished to visit their houses in the village. The houses destroyed corresponded to those owned by the persons on the list.