Bozic et al: Prepared to kill

The trial of Zdravko Bozic and others has heard from protected witness PW2, who spoke of the events
in “Vuk Karadzic” school in Bratunac, where Bosniak men were detained after the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995.

The witness appeared at the trial of Zdravko Bozic, Mladen Blagojevic, Zeljko Zaric and Zoran Zivanovic, who have been indicted for crimes against humanity committed in the school building in Bratunac during the night of 13/14 July 1995.

The indictment charges Bozic and others, all former members of  Bratunac Brigade Military Police with the Republika Srpska Army, with having planned, ordered, carried out, assisted and abetted the commitment of crimes against humanity, as well as the killing, forcible transfer and detention of people.

Witness PW2, who was a wartime colleague of the indictees, said he knew the four men very well as they were members of the same military unit in the course of 1994.

PW2 has described the events that took place during the night of 13/14 July 1995. “Five or six Bosniaks were pushed out of ‘Vuk Karadzic’ school in Bratunac by uniformed soldiers whom I did not know,” he said.

Another group of soldiers was in front of the school holding their “guns pointed at the five or six Bosniaks”. Indictees Bozic and Blagojevic were among the group members, the witness claims.

“I heard one gun shot and saw one of these people falling down…. I turned my head away and left,” witness PW2 said, adding that he “did not see who killed these people”.

“Before the shooting started I had heard them cursing [the detainees’] Turkish mothers and saying: ‘You wanted to run away, right…’, and then I also heard screams,” witness PW2 said.

Asked by Blagojevic why the witness has mentioned the two of them alone and if this was related to their stay in the USA after the war, PW2 has said these can in no way be associated.

Blagojevic and Bozic were deported from America to BiH in 2006. They have been held in custody by the Court of BiH since then.

The witness has explained that, after the fall of Srebrenica, all members of Bratunac Brigade Military Police were tasked with safeguarding the buses carrying captured Bosniaks because “the Bosniaks might have attacked someone or be attacked”.

A day after the incident that had happened in front of the school in Bratunac, witness PW2 went home and fell asleep, and claimed that he did not see what happened to the buses and the detained Bosniaks.

After he woke up he saw “work squads collecting corpses and loading them on a truck”.

The trial is set to continue on 4 September 2007.