Mladic’s Threats and Provocations

Dutch Officer Van Duijn, former member of UNPROFOR, said that he saw members of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, separating able-bodied men from a mass of refugees in the vicinity of the compound in Potocari on July 12 and 13, 1995. He said that the men were then detained in “a white house”.

The witness saw “many passports and personal belongings” of the detained Bosniaks on a meadow in front of the house. Considering the fact that the VRS said that it separated the men in order to check whether there were any criminals among them, Van Duijn asked a Serb officer, whom he knew as “Captain Mane”, why they had confiscated passports from Bosniaks, if they wanted to identify them.

“Captain Mane told me that the men would no longer need their personal documents. It was clear that dark destiny was awaiting them,” Van Duijn said.

However, the witness said that, whenever he asked Serb officers not to separate young men, who were not old enough to serve the Army, from their families, his requests were accepted.

Mladic, former Commander of VRS, is charged with genocide against about 7,000 Srebrenica Bosniaks and deportation of thousands of women, children and the elderly from Srebrenica in the days that followed the occupation of the United Nations protected zone by units under his command on July 11, 1995.

Describing his two meetings with Mladic in Potocari, the witness said that Mladic told him that, “in ten years he and his soldiers would be in the Netherlands in order to help the Dutch protect themselves from other races and Muslims”. While Van Duijn was saying that, indictee Mladic showed signs of disapproval and got up in order to give instructions to his Defence attorneys, but presiding Judge Alphons Orie invited him to sit down and warned him that he would otherwise be removed from the courtroom.

Van Duijn described how he helped a woman come to a truck, onto which her five children had already been loaded, after having sent his interpreter to explain to Mladic, who was standing nearby, what was going on.

“Mladic got mad due to the fact that I sent my interpreter to him. He told the interpreter to tell me that he would shoot the interpreter if I did it again,” the witness said, adding that the indictee then ridiculed Bosniaks by saying that they “just kept making children”.

While being cross-examined by Mladic’s Defence attorney Dragan Ivetic, Van Duijn confirmed that Srebrenica was not demilitarised, although its demilitarisation was foreseen under an agreement, declaring it the United Nations protected zone in 1993.

The witness said that it was true that between 200 and 300 UNPROFOR soldiers could not demilitarise the enclave, although they confiscated weapons, which they saw, from members of Bosniak forces. Also, he confirmed that Dutch soldiers “sometimes” saw new weapons and equipment in the possession of members of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Responding to a suggestion by the Defence, the witness confirmed that “there was no other solution” but to evacuate civilians from Potocari, adding that “many of them expressed a wish to leave, as they lacked water and food”.

Van Duijn confirmed that he saw about 150 men in “the white house” and that, while he was present, none of them were abused.

The trial of Mladic is due to continue on Friday, April 26.