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Humanitarian Law CenterI have been a member of this unit from the moment it was formed and, asI have already said, I am its commander.The Scorpions unit was formed in 1991 as a regular Yugoslav Army unit and,as a part of its special forces units, it was deployed to Bosnia and Croatia. Atthe end of the combat operations in Bosnia and Croatia, the unit was transferredinto the reserve units and the men were withdrawn to Serbia.The core of the unit was kept together according to the rules and regulationsand the instructions we received. Other members of the unit dispersedwherever they had accommodation and however we could providenormal living conditions for them. After the NATO aggressor’s air strike onour country, the Scorpions’ command structure received an order to gatherthe unit again. The unit was gathered, issued with equipment, partially inBelgrade regarding the weapons we received in Prolom Banja, and on 28March 1999, early in the morning, we arrived in Podujevo.”In this phase of the procedure, the court comments that this witness gavethe same statement regarding the equipment, unit’s stay in Prolom Banja,and arrival to Podujevo as the already examined witness Sran Manojlović“Srle”. The state prosecutor and the defence counsellors agree that the witnessshould not be examined in detail in this part of his testimony.“We arrived in Podujevo early in the morning. Our two buses parked nearthe Podujevo police station, which was also the command post. As a matterof fact, we parked some 300 or 400 metres away from the police station. Asthe rules prescribe, I went to the command post immediately with my deputy,one liaison officer, and one soldier from the personal security detachment,in order to meet with the company commanders who had alreadycome to Podujevo and make plans with them regarding my unit’s furtheractions, and accommodation for my unit. All in all I wanted to see how wewere going to operate as of the moment we came since we were all on thesame task, which was to defend our fatherland.The Priština SAJ Deputy Commander Sava Simović, one of the SAJ commanders,and three or four other persons from their units whose ranks Idid not know at the moment, attended the meeting. I know that ColonelTrajković’s driver was present, too. He was wounded earlier. After we,78

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