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Protected Prosecution witness RM-314 said he survived the shooting committed by members of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, on the banks of the Jadar River near Konjevic Polje.
Mladic, the wartime VRS leader, is charged with genocide against some 7,000 Srebrenica Muslims in the days that followed the occupation of the UN protected enclave by the VRS on July 11, 1995.
RM-314 said that he was among several thousand men who were trying to break through the VRS ring and get to Tuzla through the woods following the fall of Srebrenica. The witness said that he was captured on July 13, 1995 and that Serb policemen beat him up and abused him, just like all other captives.
After being held in a warehouse near Konjevic Polje for some time, the witness was ordered to get onto a bus together with “15 or 16 other Muslims”.
“Four soldiers and a female driver got on the bus with us. Those soldiers beat us up in the warehouse…Some time later we were ordered to get out of the bus. They lined us up next to a metal partition on the side of the road. A soldier then said: ‘Not there’. We were told to go to the river. They lined us up again. A 14-year old boy was among us. The four soldiers followed us and shot at us,” witness RM-314 said.
The witness was hit on his left hip. He fell into the river and managed to flee from the crime scene. On his way he came across a nurse from Srebrenica, who offered him medical assistance. He said that he still felt pain from the gunshot wound, which got worse over time.
During the cross-examination Mladic’s defence attorney Dragan Ivetic suggested that the witness was a member of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, ABiH, quoting the first statement he gave to prosecution investigators in August 1995 in which said that he was “an ABiH soldier”.
“No,” RM-314 responded, explaining that he did not correct this information because he was in a bad mental state at the time. The witness denied the existence of organized ABiH units in Srebrenica, claiming that he saw armed individuals, but not groups.
While being examined by the defence, witness RM-314 said that during his stay at a military dispensary an ABiH security officer asked him to say that he was shot in Karakaj, near Zvornik, but he refused to do so.
Mladic is also charged with persecuting Muslims and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorizing civilians in Sarajevo through a campaign of shelling and sniping and taking UNPROFOR members hostage.
The trial of Mladic is due to continue on May 9.
