Pelemis and Peric: Telegram from Command
30 August 2010 A former president of the Pilica local authority told the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina that he wasn’t informed that male detainees from Srebrenica would be brought to Pilica.
Pero Petrovic, who testified for the defence of indictee Momir Pelemis, said he contacted the Zvornik Municipal Committee and Zvornik Brigade Command but was told it was “none of my business”.
“In a shop near the school building, I met two women who seemed worried and told me that some prisoners from Srebrenica were arriving. After I had contacted the brigade, about 20 buses were parked in front of the school building,” Petrovic said.
Momir Pelemis, the former deputy commander and chief of headquarters with the First Battalion of Zvornik Brigade with the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, and Slavko Peric, the former assistant commander for security with the same brigade, are charged with the murder of several hundred Srebrenica residents in the Cultural Centre in Pilica in the Zvornik municipality and at the Branjevo military farm in July 1995.
During cross-examination, the witness said he saw Peric on the day the detainees arrived, adding that Peric told him he had “received a telegram from command asking him to prepare the location”.
Petrovic said he went to the municipality to discuss “the possibility of relocating them”. However, upon his return to Pilica, he saw buses parked in front of the Cultural Center in which the local community offices were located.
“No representatives of the army contacted me. An unknown soldier came to me and asked me to give him a key to the hall. As I did not have the key, they broke in. I did not go to Pilica during the course of the following weekend. When I came there on Monday I saw them transporting the dead people to Branjevo farm,” Petrovic said.
Ilija Ristic, who also testified for the defence of Pelemis, said that he was the director of the elementary school in Pilica and was on summer holiday between July 12 and 15. He said that local residents told him that prisoners had been brought to the school building. He went to the school only “two or three days after the prisoners had been taken away”.
“I did not go to the school building as neither me nor the local Pilica residents were happy with the fact that they brought the prisoners to the school. The army could use the school building for their purposes without asking me. I do not know who brought the prisoners or who opened the school door, but I heard some people say that the prisoners were guarded by some unknown policemen,” Ristic said.
He did not notice any damages to the school building apart from “the mess in the hall and other premises”.
“People were saying that the detainees had been taken away and their end was tragic. They said they had been killed by the same people who had brought them to Pilica,” Ristic said.
The next hearing will take place on September 6.
D.S.
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