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The then lieutenant Koster said that, on July 12 he met Mladic in the vicinity of UNPROFOR’s Base in Potocari, where thousands of refugees from Srebrenica came seeking shelter from the Republika Srpska Army, VRS.
According to the Dutch officer, Mladic told him that they would begin deporting civilians. When Koster mentioned that UNPROFOR Commander Thom Karremans did not know about it, Mladic said that he “was not interested in your commander”.
As Koster protested again, Mladic threatened him that he “would be in trouble if he opposed him”.
The prosecutors played a part of that conversation during which Mladic said that “all those who wanted” to leave would be taken onto the buses.
According to Koster, a short time later the VRS began loading Muslims women, children and the elderly onto buses, after having separated them from able-bodied men, whom they took to a nearby “white house”.
The witness said that he managed to prevent the separation of a 15-year old boy from his mother, denying the allegations that Dutch soldiers assisted in the separation of Muslim men.
General Mladic, the then Commander of the Republika Srpska Army, is charged with genocide against more than 7,000 Muslim men from Srebrenica in the days that followed the occupation of the enclave by the VRS on July 11, 1995.
Witness Koster said that he met Mladic again and that he asked him “if he saw some Muslim soldiers”. Koster told him that he had not seen them and that “I would not have told him even if I had seen them”.
He said that Dutch soldiers found bodies of nine killed men in Potocari on July 13, 1995.
“I saw nine corpses, lying on their stomachs. They were more or less lined up. They had wounds caused by fire arms bullets on their backs,” Koster said.
While being cross-examined by Nenad Petrusic, Defence attorney of Mladic, the witness said that he did not know to which ethnic group the victims belonged.
When the Defence suggested that the evacuation of Muslim civilians was agreed upon between General Mladic and Colonel Karremans, Koster confirmed that such an agreement was made “at some point”, but the buses had arrived in Potocari before that.
The indictment charges Mladic with persecuting Muslims and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorising civilians in Sarajevo by a long-lasting shelling and sniping campaign and taking UNPROFOR soldiers hostage in the period from 1992 to 1995.
The next witness at Mladic’s trial is due to be examined after the summer break, on August 21.
