Mass Killings out of Revenge
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Jovan Nikolic testified that it was a classic incident and an example of revenge provoked by the fact that Bosniak prisoners had rebelled and killed a police officer and wounded several guards.
Nikolic, who was the manager of the Kravica Farming Co-operative stated that in the morning of 14 July 1995 he came across a horrific scene by the warehouse.
Masked soldiers forced a dozen or fifteen prisoners to lie down facing ground and shot them in the back, Nikolic recalled but he did not recognise the perpetrators.
According to the summary of the witness statement that Karadzic read in the courtroom, Nikolic left for Bratunac after the large-scale rebellion in the Kravica warehouse and informed the authorities about the incident The authorities immediately took measures to clean up the terrain by removing the bodies to the Glogova village and burying them.
Karadzic, the former president of the Republic of Srpska and supreme commander of its armed forces, is charged with genocide against more than 7,000 Bosniaks from Srebrenica in the days following the capture of that eastern Bosnia enclave by the Army of Republika Srpska. He also stands trial for taking part in the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats, wreaking terror upon civilians in Sarajevo and taking the UNPROFOR members hostage.
According to the indictment, around 1,000 Bosniaks were killed in the Kravica Farming Co-operative warehouse on 13 and 14 July 1995, in the first of a number of mass killings of Srebrenica prisoners.
In the course of the cross-examination, Prosecutor Jullian Nicholls reminded the witness that in 2001 he stated that he had seen genocide in the Kravica warehouse. Nikolic replied that he did not remember using that word and that back then he did not know what the word implied but that what he had seen was horrific.
After the prosecutor reminded him about the statement he gave in 2005 in BiH, Nikolic confirmed his presence in the Kravica warehouse also in the evening of 13 July 1995. He said that it was true that a police officer had told him that people were being killed, that there were many dead and that the perpetrators were members of the Special Police Unit from Skelani. The witness also confirmed that he had heard bursts of fire and explosions coming from the warehouse.
I said that a severe incident took place in Kravica on 13 July in which the prisoners seized the weapons from the guards, opened fire whereupon the guards retaliated with fire killing the men that were in the hangar. I happened to be there in the evening, I stayed for 5-6 minutes and returned to Bratunac, said Nikolic.
When asked why he didnt mention it in the statement he gave to Karadzic defence, he said that no one had asked him.
When asked by the Prosecutor that earlier he had stated that the perpetrators of the killing were also the same police officers he saw the following morning, the witness replied: “No, there were two or three soldiers wearing balaclavas.
When the prosecutor suggested that killing 1,000 men that lasted for hours could not have been a spontaneous and emotional reaction to the rebellion, Nikolic stated that there were no 1,000 people there because there was not enough room.
It was an uncontrolled response of people that either suffer from a mental disorder or are outlaws or seek revenge. No normal person could have done that, Nikolic replied.
The trial in the Karadzic case will resume on Monday, 18 March.
