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Witness RM-254 specified that he saw Serb soldiers killing ten Bosniak captives and wounding a 16-year old boy next to the Kravica warehouse.
While being cross-examined by Mladic’s Defence attorney Dragan Ivetic, the witness, however, said that, while he was there, Serb soldiers continued “taking people out of the hangar and shooting them”.
When asked why he failed to mention that earlier, he said that, while visiting the crime scene a few months ago, he “remembered all the things that happened and each wall in front of which people were lined up and shot.”
Mladic, former Commander of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, is charged with genocide of about 7,000 Srebrenica Bosniaks in the days that followed the occupation of the enclave by VRS on July 11, 1995. According to the charges, Serb forces killed about 1,000 Bosniaks in the Kravic warehouse on July 13, 1995.
RM-245 said that, prior to having been captured in Kravica, he and his father were in a line of several thousands of Bosniak men, who tried to break through the VRS ring around Srebrenica by walking through the woods after the fall of the town. He has never seen his father since the convoy came across an ambush.
The witness described that VRS members distributed automatic guns and two ammunition charges to him and ten other Bosniak captives in front of the Kravica warehouse and told them to shoot at Bosniak forces, who were supposed to appear in the vicinity of that place, threatening them that “they would otherwise shoot at us”.
Witness RM-245 said that, when one of the soldiers sent him to fetch some water, he “came across a 13-16 year old girl, who had been slaughtered.” “At that moment I decided to run away. It was better to be shot by a bullet than be slaughtered,” the witness said, explaining that he dropped his gun and ran towards the woods, while Serb soldiers were shooting at him.
After having wondered through the woods with a group of Srebrenica Bosniaks for several days, the witness was captured in a village again. Members of VRS then took him and about 500 other captives to a meadow in the vicinity of Konjevic Polje. He saw about one hundred corpses on that meadow.
“Killed people were scattered over the meadow to where we had been brought. It seemed as if they had tried to run away,” the witness said.
RM-245 said that a Serb officer asked him how old he was and that he said 13. The witness and four other boys were then separated from other captives and transferred to Bratunac. Following an examination in Bratunac, the boys were transferred to Kalesija and released.
Mladic’s Defence attorney Ivetic asked the witness whether he stuck to his allegation that Mladic himself examined him in Bratunac, as he said in one of his statements given to the Hague Prosecution.
“Yes, he introduced himself to us as Ratko Mladic. I really did not know that man, so I do not know whether it was Ratko Mladic or not,” the protected witness said.
When asked by Ivetic whether he could recognise Mladic in the courtroom, RM-245 said: “I cannot confirm that. I cannot remember. Many years have passed. People have changed a lot.”
The trial of Mladic, who is also charged with persecuting Bosniaks and Croats, terrorising civilians in Sarajevo and taking UNPROFOR members hostage, is due to continue on Friday, July 5.
