Vukovic and Tomic: Cleaning Srebrenica

First Prosecution witness Jovan Nikolic, who appeared at the trial for the genocide committed in Srebrenica, recalled having been informed, on June 13, 1995 that “an incident happened” in the Agricultural Cooperative in Kravica, in Bratunac municipality, and that many people were killed. 

The State Prosecution charges Radomir Vukovic and Zoran Tomic, former members of the Second Special Police Squad from Sekovici, with having participated in this crime, when more than 1,000 men were brought to Kravica and killed there.  

In July 1995 Nikolic was Director of the Cooperative Complex, to which Kravica belonged as well. As soon as he heard about “the incident”, he went to Kravica to see what happened. 

“As I was entering Kravica, a worker met me and told me that a group of prisoners had been brought there at about 5 or 6 p.m. He said that they were taken to the hangar. One of them took away a gun from a guard and killed him. Then they started shooting and there were many killed people,” Nikolic said, adding that a men, dressed in police uniform, approached him and told him to “stand sentinel” somewhere. 

As he said, the following morning Nikolic went to Kravica again. He saw another group of prisoners, about 20 people, standing in front of the hangars. “A man, with a ‘phantom’ mask on his face” told them to lie down and then he killed them.  

“I could see that there were many dead people in the hangar and in front of it. They were covered with hay. It was a distressing scene,” Nikolic recalled.

Answering questions made by Trial Chamber member David Re, Nikolic said that “municipal authorities” decided to clean the area on that day, because “they feared a possible infection”, as the hangars were not far from the village. 

“They brought a loader truck and two or three trucks. I saw them loading corpses on the trucks. They did not try to hide the bodies. I was told that they were transferring the bodies to Glogova. I was there the following day as well, when they finished with it. Two water tanks came to wash off the blood,” Nikolic said.

Ostoja Stanojevic, former driver with the Engineering Squad of the Zvornik Brigade, who appeared as the second witness at this hearing, told the Court that, in July 1995, he was tasked with going to Srebrenica and “clean the garbage”, because the town was “filthy” after the residents had moved out. 

“I came to Bratunac and stayed overnight. The next day, in the afternoon hours, an unknown man came and told me that I should come with him to Kravica to do something. When I got there, I saw a loader truck. I saw four men, wearing gas masks, carrying our corpses and putting them in the loader, which then loaded them onto my truck,” Stanojevic said.

He said he drove the corpses to Glogova, adding that a grave, in which other corpses had already been, had been dug below a house. 

“Two men, wearing gas-masks, unloaded them and stayed there to bury them, using shovels. I returned to Kravica. This time they loaded fewer corpses, because there were no more of them,” the witness said, adding that he then returned to Bratunac.

The trial is due to continue on December 18, 2008, when the Prosecution will examine two more witnesses.