Mladic: Surviving Massacre on Branjevo
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After having been taken from Potocari, the witness was detained, along with tens of other Bosniaks, in a school building in Bratunac for two days. He said that Serb soldiers took some of the detainees out, adding that those men never came back.
RM-255 said that the VRS transferred the prisoners to Pilica on July 15, although they were told that they would be taken to Tuzla. At around noon the following day, Serb soldiers tied the Muslim men’s hands and drove them by bus to a nearby Branjevo military farm. RM-255 said that, upon their arrival, he saw dead bodies on a meadow and heard gunshots.
The detainees were ordered to line up. After that they were shot at from automatic guns. The witness said that he was not shot, but he fell down between dead bodies and stayed there until the shooting was over.
According to the charges against Mladic, former Commander of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, Serbian forces killed more than 1,000 Bosniak men on Branjevo on July 16, 1995. Mladic is charged with genocide against more than 7,000 Muslims from Srebrenica in the days that followed the occupation of Srebrenica by VRS on July 11, 1995.
In addition, Mladic is charged with persecuting Muslims and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorising civilians in Sarajevo and taking UNPROFOR soldiers hostage in the period from 1992 to 1995.
Witness RM-255 said that, some time later he managed to untie his hands and run away from there, along with four other survivors. After having wandered for a few days, he surrendered to military police of the Serb Army, which transferred him to Batkovic detention camp, near Bijeljina. He was released five months later.
At some point during his testimony RM-255 suggested that he saw indictee Mladic at the crime location, but Prosecutor Peter McCloskey said that he would not rely on that allegation.
When asked by Miodrag Stojanovic, additional Defence attorney of Mladic, who ordered Bosniaks from Srebrenica to leave the enclave and go to Potocari on July 11, the witness said: “Grenades told us. They did not distinguish between women, children and soldiers”.
“People knew that the Serb Army killed everybody and that it destroyed everything, like fire,” the witness said.
At the end of his testimony witness RM-255 said that he came to The Hague Tribunal to “seek justice and that justice cannot be accomplished without life imprisonment”.
The trial of Mladic is due to continue on Friday, July 20.
