An Organizational Mechanism of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for Concealing Aggression Against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina
An Organizational Mechanism of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia for Concealing Aggression Against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina

Summary/Abstract: This article examines the formation and functioning of the 30th Personnel Center (30th PC) of the Yugoslav Army, established in 1993 as a key organizational mechanism of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) for concealing its own role in the War Against the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina (1992–1995). Based on archival materials of the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army, transcripts of the Supreme Defence Council, military acts, as well as judicially facts and evidentiary materials of the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY), the article demonstrates that the 30th PC was not merely an administrative or social solution for regulating the status of former members of the Yugoslav People’s Army or the Yugoslav Army. Rather, it functioned as an institutionalized “interface” through which Yugoslavia maintained personnel, command, and financial links with the Army of ‘Republika Srpska’ (RS) in Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the same time, they deliberately produced a formal–legal distance from the armed conflict on the territory of the internationally recognized state of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Particular attention is devoted to documents from October and November 1993, which explicitly refer to the “lack of a firm legal basis” for deploying active military personnel outside Yugoslavia without their consent, as well as to the need for a “high level of data protection” vis-à-vis the domestic and international public, constituting evidence of a conscious strategy of plausible deniability.

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