Documentation for Special Operations Unit (JSO)
March 30, 1999
The Boston Globe
Systematic, methodical, and deadly, they came house to house, dressed in their Australian bush hats and bright green camouflage uniforms, brandishing side-holster bayonets and AK-47 automatic rifles.
They are known as "the Frenkis," the Serbian paramilitary forces carrying out what they call ethnic cleansing in a brutal expulsion of ethnic Albanians from the Kosovo town of Pec
The Frenkis descended on Pec in January, just weeks before the world focused on futile peace talks in France. As many as 1,000 members of the force, working in units of up to 10, methodically established a base for their campaign of terror.
The Frenkis served as shock troops, witnesses said, coming to the homes of ethnic Albanians and firing bursts of machine gun fire at the windows and ordering them out. Then the Frenkis would proceed to loot most of the homes of anything valuable, often stripping women of jewelry. Men who tried to resist were beaten. Some were taken to unknown locations.
April 11, 1999
The Philadelphia Inquirer
International monitors believe Frankie's Boys were responsible for the Jan. 15 massacre at Racak, where 45 unarmed ethnic Albanian civilians were executed in a gully. Witnesses heard the killers communicating in a weird stew of Slavic languages. After two months of relative calm, the killings at Racak shocked the world and spurred U.S. and European leaders to begin peace talks between the Yugoslav government and Kosovo Albanians in Rambouillet, France.
April 21, 1999
Heritage Foundation Reports
These well-equipped internal security troops,
led by Frenki Simatovic, are heavily
indoctrinated, reliable, and known for their
loyalty to President Milosevic.
Feb. 19, 2003
World News Connection
Franko "Frenki" Simatovic, with whom he fought together in Krajina. Frenki later became commander of the secret police special forces unit. Whenthe Kninjas were disbanded, Simatovic took the troops with him to Serbia and formed the Special Operations Unit, whose members are known as Red Berets. Simatovic says Vasiljkovic helped form the unit and was unofficially affiliated with it.
March 14, 2003
The Washington Post
The Red Berets under Lukovic played the lead role in arresting Milosevic in March 2001 at his Belgrade villa on Djindjic's instructions. The new government, however, was divided. Djindjic favored radical economic reforms and close cooperation with the West. To balance support for Kostunica from within the army, Djindjic relied on the Red Berets and the former secret police, known here as State Security.
March 26, 2003
The Scotsman
SERBIAN police have arrested a man they suspect was the sniper who killed the country's prime minister, Zoran Djindjic. Zoran Zivkovic, Mr Djindjic's successor, identified the suspect as Zvezdan Jovanovic, the deputy commander of an elite unit of police troops formed under Slobodan Milosevic, the former president, which remains operational and has links to organised crime. (
March 27, 2003
Hobart Mercury (Australia)
The Serbian government yesterday ordered the unit disbanded, saying its roughly 300 members must return their weapons, uniforms and insignia within 30 days.
March 28, 2003
The Independent (London)
AT LEAST 15 members of the Special Operations Unit of the Serbian police have been arrested for allegedly organising the assassination of Zoran Djindjic, the Prime Minister, police sources said yesterday.
The unit, known as the JSO, was disbanded earlier this week after the arrest of Zvezdan Jovanovic, its deputy commander, who allegedly pulled the trigger in the killing.
The core of JSO was ordinary criminals and the unit ran more than 150 missions in Croatia and Bosnia, committing war crimes. The JSO was incorporated into the Serbian police force after the Dayton peace accord in 1995.
April 9, 2003
The New York Times
The police say Mr. Stambolic was abducted and killed by five members of the Red Berets, a government-sanctioned paramilitary group implicated in crimes in the 1990's wars in Croatia and Bosnia and now in the killing of Mr. Djindjic.
May 7, 2003
The Washington Post
Simatovic -- who is also known as "Frenki" -- was the first commander of the Serbian Interior Ministry's Special Operations Unit, JSO, a shadowy paramilitary unit that secretly operated across the former Yugoslavia during its violent breakup in the 1990s
Nov. 6, 2003
The Washington Post
Indeed, Red Beret members were sometimes willing to take orders from the new authorities. In April 2001, when Djindjic's government decided to arrest Milosevic, it sent masked Red Berets charging through the gate of his walled house, touching off a gun battle.
May 13, 2004
BBC Monitoring Europe - Political
Upon the end of the war in Bosnia-Hercegovina, the "Boys From Brazil" were given their official name - the Special Operations Unit. By 1996, of the 58 young men that had made up the initial team, only three survived. Between 1996 and the disbanding of the Berets in 2001, around 1,000 people were engaged in this unit. The active force consisted of 300 specialists, while the reserve force - consisting of those with minor injuries, those who were too old for active police service, and those who were married and with large families - had around 15,000 people. Experts claim that the JSO at any given moment was able to assemble 1,000 people in its base in Kula. The "Boys From Brazil" name was given to the JSO members during the 5 October 2000 revolution, when they used the "Brazil" codename over their radio units.
Jan. 19, 2007
ICTY transcript 070119ED
Within
11 the state security sector, there is a unit for special operations, JSO,
12 that was established sometime in 1996, and the precursor of that unit were
13 the so-called Red Berets. They also had other names such as Grey Wolves.
14 The beginning of their establishment dates back to 1991, which we
15 see from their emblem, on which 1999 [as interpreted] is indicated as the
16 year of establishment. That unit, according to our knowledge, was made up
17 mostly of men who had been in other theatres of war previously across
18 Yugoslavia; primarily in Croatia, and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Jan. 19, 2007
ICTY transcript 070119ED
I had knowledge that these units -- it
12 was known that these units had been in Bosnia and that they were involved
13 in some crimes. There was a trail of crimes behind them.
14 Let me explain who the men making up the unit were. Some of them
15 were drawn from Arkan's units, and one of them was the commander of the
16 JSO, Ulemek, known as Legija. We had information that we were checking in
17 1991 concerning the 1st Corps of Arkan's men, and there were 19 men and
18 102 years of imprisonment between them. So with such a problematic unit,
19 some of the men from that unit were admitted into the JSO, and one of them
20 became commander of the JSO
Jan. 19, 2007
ICTY Case070119ED
And his boss in 1998 and 1999, who was his immediate superior in
3 the MUP, if you know?
4 A. I did say that he was part of the state security sector, and the
5 head of that sector was Rade Markovic. But the immediate direct
6 communication with that unit and control of that unit, as far as I know,
7 was in the hands of Franko Simatovic, and that is why those units were
8 called on the ground Frenki's men.
Jan. 19, 2007
ICTY Case070119ED
A.: Within the state security sector, there is a unit for special operations, JSO, that was established sometime in 1996, and the precursor of that unit were the so-called Red Berets. They also had other names such as Grey Wolves. The beginning of their establishment dates back to 1991, which we
see from their emblem. They were recognisable by their good weapons, weapons that actually exceeds the quality needed by a special operations unit. They had, for instance, the MiG 124 helicopter that even the army didn't have. They had Hummer vehicles. They had all sort of special ordnance. They wore the latest NATO-style uniforms in green colour. And wherever they appeared, it was obvious to which unit they belonged.
Q.: You mentioned Bosnia and Croatia. Were you aware that the Red Berets had engaged in action during the war in Croatia and Bosnia in the early 1990s?
A.: Yes.
March 11, 2011
Time
Politicians in Belgrade needed a way to make secret war on one of their own republics without involving the military. Simatovic's solution was to set up a small unit of ex-policemen, ex-convicts and other self-proclaimed volunteers who would answer only to Serbian secret police. The Red Berets, or "Frenki's boys," as they came to be known, were remarkably successful: they helped invent the 1990s version of "ethnic cleansing" and went on to become the most feared paramilitary unit of the Balkan wars. Without such units, politicians like Milosevic and Radovan Karadzic would never have had the means to carry out their radical ethnic policies. When the war expanded to Bosnia in 1992, Frenki moved with it and later went on to Kosovo. ....."Frenki's boys were at the forefront of several ethnic-cleansing campaigns in Kosovo and Bosnia."
