Captives in Graves

Testifying at Ratko Mladic’s trial, former Hague Prosecution investigator Dean Manning denies the possibility that people, who were killed in combat, were buried in mass graves associated with the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995

Manning, who co-ordinated an investigation into the mass murders of Srebrenica Muslims, said that those people were not killed in combats, but captured, shot and buried.

In order to prove that, the witness said that many victims were blindfolded and tied and that the blindfolds and pieces of wire were found in the mass graves.

Showing satellite images made by US authorities and photographs taken during the exhumations from the mass graves, Manning said that bodies were transferred from primary graves, which were located near the execution locations, to secondary graves at inaccessible locations in September 1995 in order to hide the crime.

Mladic, the then Commander of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, is charged with genocide against 7,000 Muslim men from Srebrenica in the days that followed the occupation of the UN protected enclave by VRS on July 11, 1995.

Manning said that most of about forty primary and secondary graves contained evidence, like bullet capsules and blindfolds, which linked the victims with certain execution locations in the Zvornik area. 

As an example, he mentioned that parts of doors and the warehouse building in Kravica village, which was eight kilometres away, were found in two primary graves in Glogova village, near Bratunac.

The same fragments were then also found in secondary graves in Zeleni Jadar to which the VRS transferred the bodies, which had originally been buried in Glogova, in the fall of 1995 as part of a secret operation designed with the aim of concealing the crimes. 

According to the charges against Mladic and previous verdicts, Serb forces killed about 1,000 Srebrenica Muslims in the warehouse in Kravica on July 13, 1995.

Describing the shooting of about 500 Muslim captives in Kozluk on July 15, 1995, Manning said that the victims were forced to kneel next to a waste pit, where broken bottles from a nearby factory had been dumped. After having been shot at, they fell into the pit.

Glass fragments from the Kozluk primary grave were found, mixed with human remains, later in secondary graves. 

The trial of Mladic is due to continue on July 11.