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Pepic, the then member of the Second Squad with the RS Special Police Brigade from Sekovici, said that, on that day his commander Cuturic ordered him to stop a convoy of buses, transporting the local population away from Srebrenica, at the cross-roads near Kravica until male captives had been transferred from Sandici to the warehouse.
As he said, soon after the captives had passed by him, the witness heard gunshots and detonations coming from the warehouse in Kravica.
Cuturic then appeared at the cross-roads and told him that one of the captives had killed a police officer after having seized his automatic gun. Cuturic’s palms were scorched when he grabbed the rifle pipe in an attempt to take it away from the captive.
Pepic told the Tribunal that Cuturic told him that Muslims were being killed in the warehouse in Kravica before going to the dispensary in Bratunac.
When asked whether Cuturic told him who was responsible for the murders, Pepic answered negatively.
“He did not say anything except that somebody would be held responsible for what he had done”.
According to Pepic’s testimony, the shooting lasted until Cuturic’s return from Bratunac an hour later, but its intensity varied.
Cuturic then ordered Pepic to let the buses with refugees from Potocari move on.
The indictment charges Mladic, the then Commander of the Republika Srpska Army, with genocide against about 7,000 Muslims from Srebrenica in the days that followed the occupation of the UN protected enclave by VRS on July 11, 1995.
According to the charges and previous verdicts, the murder of about 1,000 Muslims in the warehouse in Kravica was the first in a series of mass executions of Muslim men.
Witness Pepic said that, while passing through Kravica, he saw piles of hay in front of the warehouse, adding that he believed that those piles covered the bodies of killed Muslim men, so women and children could not see them from the buses.
The trial of Mladic, who is also charged with persecution of Muslims and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, terror against civilians in Sarajevo and taking UNPROFOR members hostage, is due to continue on June 11.
