Stanisic and Milosevic: Srebrenica Massacre Witness Recalls Blood Clean-Up

Testifying in court in Sarajevo on Wednesday, witness Milan Stanisic said he reported what he saw in the village of Petkovci in eastern Bosnia to his commander, defendant Ostoja Stanisic.

“There was a puddle of blood on the left side of the road and a dead man on the road,” said Stanisic, who served as assistant commander for logistics in the Bosnian Serb army.

“I went to the commander and asked for information. The commander told me that he was already briefed about this. He asked for a water truck and told me to clean it,” he said.

Stanisic said he was not present during the clean-up.

The indictment alleges that former Bosnian Serb army commander Stanisic and his deputy Marko Milosevic participated in crimes committed at the Petkovci dam, near Djulici in the municipality of Zvornik, where around 1,000 imprisoned Bosniak men and boys from Srebrenica were executed in July 1995.

The victims had been taken from Srebrenica to the dam, where they were executed and their bodies thrown into a river.

This is the first trial for the murders in Petkovci at the Bosnian state court.

Witness Stanisic also testified that two months after Bosnian Serb forces took control of Srebrenica, he heard that Bosniaks were brought to Petkovci but that he never heard about any killings in the village, contradicting a statement he made during the pre-trial investigation.

Bosnian Serb forces seized the UN-protected ‘safe haven’ of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, after which more than 7,000 Bosniak men and boys were killed in the surrounding villages and some 30,000 women, children and elderly people fled their homes.

The trial continues on February 6.