Minimal Participation of Police

Karisik said that, due to the fact that he did not have any pieces of information, he could not have informed Karadzic about it, when he spoke to him after the fall of Srebrenica.

The indictment charges Karadzic, the then President of Republika Srpska and supreme Commander of its Army, with genocide against about 7,000 Srebrenica Muslims, whom Serb military and police forces shot in the days that followed their occupation of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995.

While being cross-examined by Prosecutor Jullian Nicholls, Karisik opted out by saying that the Ministry of Internal Affairs, MUP of RS, did not have any authority over the wartime zones, such was Srebrenica, but the Army did.

When asked whether he now knew that members of the Second Drina Corps of VRS, including the Police Brigade, shot thousands of Muslim captives, Karisik said that he “still really does not know the scope, number and real nature of that crime”, because “many manipulations happened”.

“In my capacity as Assistant Minister of Internal Affairs, I was neither informed orally nor in writing that any crimes had happened. I heard about those things on television and read about them in newspapers in RS after the war. I still do not know the real truth about the scope of those crimes… I do not know who the crime perpetrators were and whether they were members of the Drina Corps,” Karisik said.

Nicholls presented the witness with a series of letters submitted by public and state security centres in Zvornik to the Public Safety Sector Headquarters in Bijeljina, whose chief he was, and the Police Headquarters in Pale during and after the attack on Srebrenica.

In those letters the headquarters were informed about the course of the operation, capturing people, taking Muslim civilians away and the participation of the Police Brigade in the offensive.  

Not denying the authenticity of the letters, Karisik stuck to his allegation that, as far as the Headquarters in Pale was concerned, he was in charge of the Sarajevo battlefield and did not deal with the attack on Srebrenica.

“On the basis of those letters, we did not know that people would be captured during a military operation led by General Mladic,” the witness said, repeating his allegations about the “minimal participation of the MUP” in “the VRS operation”.

The witness said that it was not true that, on July 10, 1995 Karadzic dictated to him an order about the participation of the police unit in the attack on Srebrenica, as said by Tomo Kovac, the then Deputy Minister of Internal Affairs of RS, during his testimony, but he pointed out that police forces were subordinate to the VRS.  

He confirmed that he spoke to Karadzic the following day, when the enclave fell, but they did not discuss Srebrenica.

While confirming that he was present in Zvornik on July 16, 1995, Karisik denied the Prosecutor’s suggestion that on his way to Zvornik, he passed through “an alley of murders”, or actually by Pilica, Rocevic and Orahovac villages, as well as Branjevo farm, where Serb forces shot thousands of Muslims during those days.

“That is not true. I do not know exactly where some of the scaffolds are. I did not see anything… any corpses,” the witness said, repeating his allegation that he went to Zvornik in order to attend negotiations about the release of a captured policeman.

The Prosecutor is due to finish cross-examining Karisik on Tuesday, July 2.