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Bozic et al: UN Report on attack against Srebrenica

Bozic i ostali

17 June 2008  A court expert, engaged by the Defence of the four former military police members, denies that Srebrenica was heavily shelled in July 1995.

On the second day of his testimony, court expert Radovan Radinovic, who was invited by the Defence teams, claims that the reports, made by international observers, describing detonations in Srebrenica in July 1995 were "not correct."

According to this court expert, the international observers "were not situated in the town" and therefore they could not have known what was happening ten kilometres away from them.

In addition, Radinovic said that, if it was true that about 300 or 400 detonations could be heard in Srebrenica per day, it would mean that the town was severely destroyed, "which was not the case."

As per a request made by the Defence of Zdravko Bozic, Mladen Blagojevic, Zeljko Zaric and Zoran Zivanovic, Radinovic compiled a report on the role of the military police in Srebrenica in July 1995. The State Prosecution charges the four men, as members of the Military Police Squad with the Bratunac Brigade, with having participated in the separation of men from women and children and guarding buses, which transported the captured men from Potocari to Bratunac in July 1995. The men were then detained in a school building in Bratunac, where they were mistreated and abused, and some were murdered.

During cross-examination, Radinovic said the Military Police Squad did not have a mandate to control the convoys transporting humanitarian aid, which were supposed to go to the protected enclave of Srebrenica, and they were acting as "physical security" only.

As per the court expert's findings, Momir Nikolic, chief of the security section with the Bratunac Brigade Staffs, had "a task to control the humanitarian aid convoys which came to Srebrenica in order to avoid possible malversation."

The Hague Tribunal sentenced Momir Nikolic to 20 years imprisonment for crimes committed in the Srebrenica area.

Asked by the Prosecutor if Srebrenica residents received the food transported by the convoys, the witness said that "all previously announced convoys were allowed to enter Srebrenica, provided that they transported the goods, as per the earlier announced lists."

The Prosecutor asked the court expert why about 2,000 Bosniak men were separated from women, children and the elderly in Potocari, bearing in mind that the Bratunac Brigade had a list of 389 persons, who were suspected of having committed war crimes against Bosnian Serbs, as indicated by the court expert on the first day of his testimony.

The court expert responded by saying that he did not know who had made the list of 389 names, adding that, on the basis of their documents, the identity of those men should have been determined and not all of them should have been separated.

As per the court expert's findings, the Military Police Squad "had a task to escort the captured persons" and there were regulations, specifying how those people should have been treated and when it was allowed to use force. The court expert said that the detainees were escorted by members of the Military Police Squad and some other, "even more important, units."

"All tasks executed by the military policemen were under the mandate of the Bratunac Brigade," the court expert concluded.

The trial is due to continue on June 26.