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Gavric said that, while searching the area for members of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina on July 17, 1995, his unit captured 38 civilians, including four boys “aged between 8 and 14”.
According to Gavric’s testimony, VRS Intelligence Officer Momir Nikolic, whom the Hague Tribunal sentenced to 20 years for crimes in Srebrenica, ordered him to hand over the captured civilians to special police forces. Gavric then took the boys to Bratunac, where a TV crew filmed them. They were exchanged for Serb policemen, who had been captured by the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, on the following day.
The capture of boys was described by protected witness RM-245 on Thursday, July 6, saying that he was 16 years old at the time, but he lied to Serb soldiers and told them that he was 14. During his testimony he said that, prior to being captured, he stood near the Agricultural Co-operative warehouse in Kravica village and witnessed the shooting of more than ten Bosniak captives.
Mladic, former Commander of VRS, is charged with genocide against about 7,000 Srebrenica Bosniaks in July 1995. He is on trial for having persecuted Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorised civilians in Sarajevo and taken UNPROFOR members hostage.
Witness Gavric confirmed that he requested that the captured boys be filmed in Bratunac, because he was afraid that something might happen to them.
“War is dirty… My goal was to protect them. I thought that, if we filmed them, nobody would even dare touch them or, God forbid, do something bad to them,” the witness said.
When asked by judge Alphons Orie whether his care for the boys was based on concrete information about the abuse of captives, Gavric answered negatively.
“I knew that I would not accompany the kids the whole time… I ensured their lives and my reputation,” he said.
Responding to questions by Mladic’s Defence attorney Miodrag Stojanovic, Gavric confirmed that, during a search of the area, Serb forces came across numerous corpses of Bosniaks, who had tried to break through from Srebrenica to Tuzla by walking through the woods.
The witness suggested that many of them committed suicide by hanging, shooting themselves from firearms or activating hand bombs.
Responding to a suggestion by attorney Stojanovic, Gavric confirmed that he attended a meeting at the VRS Bratunac Brigade Command on July 12, 1995 and that, during the meeting Mladic ordered his unit to continue “searching the terrain” around Srebrenica. “He did not issue any other orders,” the witness said.
The trial of Mladic is due to continue on Monday, July 8.
