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Pelemis and Peric: ‘An Extraordinary Task’

By: Merima Husejnović

Pelemiš i Perić

30 August 2010  After more than 18 months prosecutors have finished presenting evidence against two men accused of genocide at Srebrenica in July 1995.

Using more than 40 witnesses, prosecutors have attempted to prove that Momir Pelemis and Slavko Peric participated in the murders of several hundred Srebrenica residents at the Cultural Centre building in Pilica and at the Branjevo military farm.

Pelemis was deputy commander and chief of headquarters of the First Battalion with the Zvornik Brigade of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, while Peric was assistant commander for security with the same brigade.
They were arrested at the beginning of November 2008 and have been in custody since. Their trial began on March 10, 2009. The first defence witnesses were examined in late August.

“The oldest victim killed at Branjevo was 84-years-old and the youngest was 14. Their remains were found in several secondary mass graves in the Srebrenica area,” said Rifat Kesetovic, a court medical expert, adding that 1,052 victims could be linked to the murders committed at Branjevo.

The indictment alleges that about 1,200 men from Srebrenica were shot at Branjevo on July 16, 1995. Two men who survived the mass execution testified at the trial.

“I was neither among the first nor the last men who were taken out for shooting. Some had been taken before me, and some stayed behind when they took me out. At that moment I realised there was no life any more. I counted the last seconds of my life. Can you image that? Seconds. First they ordered us to stand there and then to turn away. The burst of bullets then cut us down. I saw bodies falling down, and I fell down as well, but I was not hit,” said protected witness P6.

Protected witness Q was the second survivor of the shooting. He fell down as soon as the shooting started. Bodies of the other victims fell on top of him, covering him.   

“They took us out to the farm. They asked if we had any relatives abroad who would want to give money to rescue us. Some people who said they did were separated from the rest of us. They took us some 50 or 100 metres away from the bus. They ordered us to stand there, and they started shooting,” said witness Q.
Voices of the Suffering  

Witnesses P6 and Q both spent two days in detention at the Kula school building in Pilica before being taken to the execution site. They said conditions were bad, and they were forced to listen to soldiers mistreating and killing other prisoners.

“I can describe everything to you, but the voices I heard cannot be described. Those were really the voices of people going through suffering,” witness P6 said.

The indictment alleges that, on July 14, Pelemic ordered his soldiers to guard the detainees in Kula and Peric to supervise, control and coordinate the detention of Bosniaks.

The indictment further alleges that two days later, under Pelemis’ command, Peric coordinated blindfolding the detainees, tying their hands and taking them to the Branjevo military farm where about 1,200 were killed.

“Peric gave an order for tying the detainees’ hands and blindfolding them. We then loaded them into buses. I think there were at least 1,000 people. We went to Branjevo. I stayed there for about 15 minutes before going back home. Later on I found out that all detainees held in the school building had been killed,” said Zoran Gajic, a former member of the First Battalion.

Gajic said Peric ordered him to participate in guarding 1,000-2,000 Bosniaks in the Kula school building in July 1995, but during cross-examination said this may have happened in 1992 or 1993.

Rajko Babic, the former general affairs officer with the First Battalion, visited the school building in Pilica in mid July. He said that, under orders from Pelemis, he went with Peric “to see what the situation was like”.
“The hall was half full, but I do not know how many people were in it. The outside temperature was 32 degrees Celsius. People could hardly breathe in the hall as there were no windows. This looked so sad,” Babic said, adding that “foreign and unknown soldiers” were in charge of the prisoners.

The prosecution charges the two indictees with giving an order to secure the Cultural Centre in Pilica, in which about 600 Bosniaks were detained, on July 15 and 16. They were allegedly executed inside and outside the building.  

The indictment alleges that the following day, Peric instructed his people to remove the bodies and transfer them to Branjevo. It says that the bodies were taken from Branjevo and buried in an unmarked mass grave and that Peric deliberately participated in the organisation and coordination of the burial, by providing fuel, vehicles and manpower.

“We heard that the men were transported from Srebrenica to Kula, but nobody even assumed what was going on until Slavko Peric came, a couple of days later, ordering me to send six members of the Working Squad to Pilica to ‘clean the terrain’,” Radivoje Lakic, the former manager of the Branjevo military farm, told the court.

An Extraordinary Task  

Stanko Gajic, the former commander of the Background Unit with the VRS Lokanj Battalion, said the two indictees gave him an order over the phone to send all Working Squad members to Pilica to execute “an extraordinary task”.  

“Slavko Peric met us in front of the Cultural Centre. He ordered about 20 of us to load the corpses, telling us to load everything onto trucks and clean the centre. I was inside the building all the time. I dragged corpses to the door, and other people loaded them onto trucks. This task made me throw up and sick to death,” said Cvjetko Stevic, a former member of the Working Squad.

His colleague Ivan Peric was also in the Cultural Centre and said he would have run away had he known what he was going to do on that day.

“There were about 200 corpses in the Cultural Centre hall. They were scattered all over the floor. Most of them were dressed in civil suits,” Peric recalled.

Jakov Stevanovic, a former member of the Working Squad at the Kula school building, echoed his words.
“Peric gave us the orders. At that moment we realised what we would have to do. I peeked into the school building gym, and I saw the worst possible scene – it was full with corpses, but I do not know how many there were,” Stevanovic said.

The bodies were transported by trucks to Branjevo where they were buried in mass graves dug by witnesses Cvijetin Ristanovic and P23, among others.

“A colleague of mine had already been at the farm operating a small digger. He was not able to dig all holes, so they told me to help him as so many corpses had been there already, and trucks kept bringing new ones,” P23 said.  

Dean Manning, senior investigator with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, participated in the exhumation of bodies from mass graves in the Srebrenica area after the war. He said the remains found in the graves showed that the men were prisoners who had not been killed in a combat.

“All bodies found in the graves were in the same condition, i.e. it was proved that they had been killed in the same way. They were blindfolded and their hands were tied. Bullet holes were found on the skulls of those who were not,” Manning said.

The prosecution examined witness Richard Butler, a military expert, who said that the mass executions of civilians from Srebrenica area were “well-organised and planned actions”.

“When you consider the scope and the size of the actions that had to be undertaken prior to the execution, it becomes clear that the Zvornik Brigade members must have been informed about and aware of what was going on,” Butler said, explaining the brigade or battalion commanders were responsible for prisoners of war while security officers were in charge of securing the locations at which they were held.

The indictment alleges that, from July 9-21, Pelemis was acting commander of the First Battalion. Commander Milan Stanojevic confirmed this at the trial, saying he was in Bratunac at the time.
“In my absence, Pelemis had the same authority as me. According to the command system, the second ranking person was my security officer – Peric,” the witness explained.