Pelemis and Peric: Murdered Due to Rebellion

Prosecution witness Zoran Bojic, a former member of the Military Police Squad with the Zvornik Brigade of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, told the Court that he saw members of the First Battalion and some unknown soldiers with automatic rifles standing in front of the “Kula” school building in Pilica, in Zvornik Municipality, in July 1995.

The State Prosecution charges Momir Pelemis, former Deputy Commander and Chief of Staff of the First Battalion with the Zvornik Brigade, and Slavko Peric, Assistant Commander for Security, with having participated in the murder of about 1,200 captured Srebrenica residents, who were held in the “Kula” school building before being transferred to Branjevo military farm, and about 600 men in Pilica Center on July 15 and 16.

Bojic told the Court that he and two other military policemen were deployed to the First Battalion of the Zvornik Brigade in July 1995, adding that “Slavko Peric, Chief of Security”, issued them orders concerning the arrest of deserters. He recalled having taken over his duty on July 15, when Momir Pelemis told him that Peric had gone to Kula in Pilica.

“He said that some Srebrenica residents had been brought there, adding that he and my colleagues went there to see what was going on,” said the witness, claiming that he then also went to the school building.

“We were supposed to stay close, because Slavko was afraid that people would leave the front lines and come to the school building. We would then have to arrest and take them back to the front line, thus preventing the front lines from being weakened,” the witness recalled.

The witness said that he spent the following night in a house near the school building. The following morning he and his colleague Zoran Jovic went back home. The witness claims to have met Slavko Peric in front of the school building. He said that Peric told him that Pelemis had informed him via talkie walkie that “they would come to drive the detainees away”. 

“At about 6 p.m. we went to the school building again. We met just a few people on the main road. They told us that those men had been driven away on buses. We went to the Command, where I met Peric. He said in a low tone: ‘It seems that those fools killed those people’. We did not speak any more,”
the witness said.

Bojic said he drove Peric to the Cultural Center in Pilica “to deliver some food” the following day.

“Later on I came back to pick him up at the Center. I noticed a truck and some people loading dead bodies onto it. Peric was walking by the main road, coming from the Center. He told me that we should go to the Command, adding that those people had been killed the day before by some security guards due to a rebellion,” Bojic recalled, adding that the people who loaded the dead bodies “looked familiar”.

The trial is due to continue on June 26, 2009.