Taken Away by Force

In his testimony before the court, Paul Groenewegen said the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, took the Srebrenica Muslims from the vicinity of the UN compound in Potocari in July 1995. 
 
Mladic, the wartime commander of the VRS, is charged with genocide against some 7,000 Muslim men in the days that followed the occupation of Srebrenica by the army on July 11, 1995. He is also charged with the persecution of women and children from the UN-protected enclave.
 
“The frightened refugees had no other choice but to load onto buses which then drove them towards Kladanj,” the witness said.
 
He said that Serb soldiers forced those who objected into the vehicles. Some of the refugees wanted to leave but they were the minority, the witness said.
 
According to Groenewegen’s testimony, at the same time members of the VRS separated “approximately 400” men aged between 16 and 60 from their families and detained them in “a white house” before transporting them by buses towards Bratunac.
 
Groenewegen said he saw VRS Commander Ratko Mladic in Potocari twice while these events took place on July 12 and 13, 1995.
 
The witness told the Court that he saw a Muslim being killed at the hands of three Serb soldiers.
 
While being cross-examined by Mladic’s defence attorney Branko Lukic, the witness confirmed that he considered the armed Muslims he had seen in the enclave prior to the fall of Srebrenica to be “civilians” who were trying to defend themselves from VRS attacks.
 
The Dutch soldier accepted the allegation that UNPROFOR members were ordered to assist in the evacuation of the Muslim population.
 
When asked whether the evacuation, which took place on July 13, 1995, had been initiated before VRS members arrived in Potocari, Groenewegen answered negatively, claiming that Serb soldiers were present on that day, as well as the preceding days.
 
When defence attorney Lukic presented him with a statement by previous witness Leendert van Duijn of the Dutch UNPROFOR Battalion, who said that he decided to initiate the transport of refugees even before the arrival of Serb soldiers, Groenewegen said that he was “not informed of that”.
 
Reminding the witness that he had testified at previous trials that four, not three, Serb soldiers killed the Muslim in Potocari, defence attorney Lukic argued that Groenewegen was not an eyewitness to that murder.
 
“No, that is not true,” the witness said, saying that the difference in the number of perpetrators mentioned in his statements was due to the passage of time.
 
Mladic is charged with persecuting Muslims and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorizing civilians in Sarajevo by a campaign of shelling and sniping and taking UNPROFOR members hostage.
 
The trial was set to continue on May 2.