Pelemis and Peric: Indictee’s Order

“Slavko Peric met us in front of the Cultural Center. He told about twenty of us to load corpses, telling us to put everything on trucks and clean the Center. I was inside the Center all the time, dragging corpses to the door. Others then took them over and loaded them onto a truck. What a job it was…It made me sick and it made me hate my life,” Cvjetko Stevic said.

Momir Pelemis, former Deputy Commander and Chief of Headquarters of the First Battalion with the Zvornik Brigade of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, and Slavko Peric, former Assistant Commander for Security with the same Battalion, are charged with participation in genocide committed in Srebrenica in July 1995.

The indictment alleges that, on July 15 and 16, 1995 about 600 Bosniaks were detained in inhumane conditions in the Cultural Center in Pilica. It further alleges that, on July 16 VRS members “executed them, without trial”, inside the building and in its immediate vicinity. The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina contends that the two indictees knew about the murders.

Witness Cvjetko Markovic also loaded corpses at the Cultural Center in Pilica in July 1995. He loaded the dead onto a truck. Markovic said that “security officer” Peric gave him the order to perform this task.

“Peric was present there all the time. I did not go inside the Center, because I could not stand it. It was so hard. I wish I had killed myself before experiencing all this,” Markovic said, adding that the truck drove the corpses in the direction of Zvornik.

During cross-examination the witnesses said they did not see any members of the Army or police while they were loading the corpses, but they said they had seen “some armed people”.

The next hearing is due to take place on May 25, 2010.