Jevic et al: General Mladic’s Encouraging Words

He was captured, he went on, just like many other men from that area, and escorted to the Kravica Agricultural Cooperative warehouse, where he survived a mass shooting. He said that so many men had been brought to the warehouse “that the place became overcrowded with people”.

“A burst of bullets was fired. They started shooting and we heard screaming and yelling: ‘Don’t shoot!’ The place got dark because of the bullets and dust,” S-111 said, describing the situation. The witness testified in a room outside the courtroom.

He said that the shooting lasted from 4 or 5 p.m. until dark.

“At dawn they asked if there were any wounded people, so they could transport them to hospital. I do not know how many people stood up. Then they asked: ‘Are there any people who are not injured who could join our army?’ They drove them away by truck and shot the wounded,” the witness said.

Dusko Jevic, Mendeljev Djuric, Goran Markovic and Nedjo Ikonic are charged with having participated in the shooting in Kravica and the forcible resettlement of Bosniaks from the Srebrenica area.

The indictment alleges that Jevic was Commander of the Jahorina Training Centre with the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Republika Srpska, MUP RS, Djuric and Ikonic were company commanders with the Centre and Markovic was a squad commander.

S-111 told the Court that, when the situation had calmed down, he “pulled two dead bodies over his body”, while lying on the concrete floor and keeping his eyes closed, and he “managed to get away”. Later on he met two other survivors and he left the warehouse. When he heard a soldier ordering him to stop, he said he felt “an enormous burst of energy” and ran into the woods.

The witness said that prior to being brought to Kravica, the men were held in a meadow, where ICTY fugitive Ratko Mladic, then Commander of the Main Headquarters with the Republika Srpska Army, addressed them.

“He told us: ‘Your families have been evacuated. You will be evacuated in a day or two as well. Nobody will beat you. It is too hot here, so we shall take you to a cooler place’. I stood up and asked him: ‘General, as you can see I am barefoot. I have shoes in my backpack and I could put them on’. He told me I would get shoes,” the witness said.

He said that Mladic’s words seemed encouraging and he believed him. He was not able to say how many captured men were held in that meadow, but he heard people say there were more than 2,000.

The trial is due to continue on Monday, February 14.