VIDEO FOOTAGE OF CRIMINAL OPERATIONS BY DUDAKOVIĆ'S UNITS

BIJELJINA, AUGUST 2 /SRNA/ – On August 3, 2007, Serb media broadcast video footage of war crimes committed by members of Bosniak and Croat forces against captured Serb civilians and soldiers of the Republika Srpska Krajina Army in the Banija and Cazin Krajina regions.

More detailed footage was aired on August 7, showing the former commander of the Fifth Corps of the so-called Army of BiH, Atif Dudaković, ordering the burning of Serb villages during an operation that lasted between September 14 and September 17, 1995.

Dudaković had issued similar orders even before Operation Storm, therefore another recording exists in which, on April 14, 1995, he gave the following order:

"The breakthrough must be carried out. Kill everything that stands in front of you. I'm sorry you don't have knives... I authorize and order that the enemy be destroyed by every possible means. With a knife, a grenade, a pocketknife, with your teeth, by strangling... You have every right."

After leaving the Yugoslav People's Army /JNA/, where he had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel and served as commander of an artillery battalion in Knin, where he had been a close associate of the future commander of the Main Staff of the Republika Srpska Army, Ratko Mladić, Dudaković first became a company commander and later commander of the Second Bosniak-Croat Infantry Brigade.

With the assistance of the Croatian Armed Forces and NATO air support, Dudaković's units, during Operation Storm, a criminal Croatian military-police operation, captured nearby Serb-populated settlements and attacked the forces of the Autonomous Province of Western Bosnia loyal to Fikret Abdić.

There is irrefutable evidence that, during these military operations, Dudaković ordered the killing of prisoners and the burning of Serb villages.

In August 1995, during Operation Storm, forces under Dudaković's command cut off the retreat route of Serb refugees from Republika Srpska Krajina and killed captured Serbs in the municipality of Dvor, then part of Republika Srpska Krajina.

Following the publication of the footage of the killings, then Republika Srpska President Dragan Čavić and Prime Minister Milorad Dodik submitted a criminal complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office, along with the video evidence, against Dudaković.

Dudaković commanded the offensive against the western Krajina municipalities of Republika Srpska /Petrovac, Krupa, Sanski Most, Ključ and Mrkonjić Grad/ in the autumn of 1995, during which, 892 Serb civilians and soldiers were killed, 120,000 Serbs were expelled, and more than 30 villages were burned. Video recordings of crimes allegedly committed during that operation also exist.

After the war, Dudaković served as commander of the Joint Command of the FBiH Army.

It was not until 2018 that an indictment was filed against him on charges of serious crimes against Serb civilians, which is the trial that is still ongoing.