Crimes by Volunteers in Bratunac

Testifying in defence of Radovan Karadzic, two witnesses say that it is not known to them that Bosniaks were detained and killed in Bratunac during the war.

Defence witnesses – brothers Branimir and Aleksandar Tesic suggested that members of volunteer units were responsible for crimes against Bosniaks about which they found out later, adding that local authorities could not influence those units.

Branimir Tesic, former Assistant Commander of the Police Station in Bratunac, said that he did not know that Serb forces brought hundreds of Bosniaks from the Hranca and Glogova villages to Bratunac in 1992 and that they detained them in the school building and at the local stadium.

During the cross-examination the Prosecutor presented the witness with evidence, indicating that police participated in an attack on Glogova village in May 1992, but Tesic stuck to his allegation that it was not true.

After having been presented with witnesses’ statements, Tesic confirmed that he was in the vicinity of the stadium in Bratunac in May 1992, when captured men were brought to the school building, while women and children were taken towards Kladanj in buses. When asked how he could possibly not know that many Bosniaks were brought to the town, he said: “I knew that Muslims were coming and gathering at the stadium… Later on I found out that there were victims”.

He said that he heard about the mass murder of Bosniaks from Srebrenica in a warehouse in Kravica village on July 13, 1995 later on. According to what he heard, the captives had first opened fire at policemen.

He said that police forces were not tasked with guarding the buses of thousands of Bosniaks from Srebrenica, who stayed overnight in Bratunac on July 13, 1995, but only to safeguard the road towards Kravica and Konjevic Polje. Tesic confirmed that he was in Potocari “very briefly, for half an hour” on July 12, 1995 and that he personally saw that the first group out of thousands of refugees from Srebrenica was loaded onto buses, which then drove them towards Kladanj.

Karadzic, former President of Republika Srpska, is charged with genocide against more than 7,000 Bosniaks from Srebrenica in July 1995, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina and taking UNPROFOR members hostage.

Second witness Aleksandar Tesic said that, in his capacity as Municipal Secretary for National Defence, he attended a meeting of the local Crisis Committee in Bratunac in May 1992. He said that, at that meeting he found out that “volunteers” took Bosniaks from the surrounding villages to the school building and committed crimes. As he said, the Crisis Committee was “shocked” to hear that, so it decided to expel the volunteers from the town.

He said that he knew about “the disarming operation” in Glogova, whose aim was to “prevent conflicts”, but he heard later on that “some men were killed and wounded”. Aleksandar Tesic said that “the volunteers” were responsible for the murders of Bosniaks in Glogova and Bratunac.

He told the Tribunal that, following the occupation of Srebrenica in July 1995, Ratko Mladic, the then Commander of the Republika Srpska Army, asked him “what to do with the people”. As he said, Tesic told him that “transportation should be provided for those of them, who wanted to leave”. The witness saw several buses with captives from Srebrenica in Bratunac on July 13, 1995, but he did not hear that any of them was mistreated or killed. Mladic is currently on trial at The Hague.

Tesic further said that he had never heard Karadzic ordering persecution and murder of Bosniaks, but respecting the Geneva Convention.

The trial of Karadzic is due to continue on Wednesday, March 13.