Captives’ Fate Unknown to Savcic

Savcic was Commander of the 65th Motorised Protective Regiment of the VRS Main Headquarters at that time. Members of a military police battalion with the Regiment allegedly held more than 1,000 Muslims, who had surrendered or been captured after the fall of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, at a football stadium in Nova Kasaba village on July 13, 1995.

Retired general Savcic said that, on July 13, 1995 Major Zoran Malinic, Commander of the Military Police Battalion, informed him over the phone that he held a large number of captives in Nova Kasaba and that he had begun making a list of those people.
The indictment charges Karadzic, the then President of RS, with genocide against about 7,000 Muslim men from Srebrenica, as well as other crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Savcic said that the VRS offensive against Srebrenica was caused by attacks conducted by Muslim forces from the enclave, which was not demilitarised despite an agreement from 1993, under which it was declared a United Nations protected zone.
According to the witness’ testimony, on June 26, 1995 the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, ABiH, attacked the VRS Main Headquarters in Crna Rijeka, near Han-Pijesak from Srebrenica and Zepa.

During the cross-examination Prosecutor Julian Nicholls asked Savcic, the chief investigator with Karadzic’s defence team, whether he accepted the allegation that captives, who were held by his subordinate, Major Malinic, on July 13, 1995, were executed by July 17.

“What does this have to do with me and Malinic? … I accept that we handed over all those people to people in Bratunac as per an order by the VRS Commander (Ratko Mladic),” Savcic said, accusing the Prosecutor for “indirectly transferring the responsibility for the fate of the captives” to him.

Only after presiding judge O-Gon Kwon had intervened, Savcic said that he “now knows and accepts” that the captives were killed, but he said that he found out about it “a number of years later”, or in fact only after having “embarked on the procedure for giving a statement to Karadzic’s Defence.”

“The VRS Commander addressed the captives at the stadium in Nova Kasaba on July 13, 1995. He promised to them that they would be exchanged. What was I supposed to do? Predict their fate?” Savcic said.
The Prosecutor is due to complete the cross-examination of Savcic on July 31. As the hearing continued, Cedo Kljajic, who was the third highest ranking officer with the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Republika Srpska in 1992 and 1993, testified via video link from Canada.

Kljajic said that Karadzic asked the police to act according to the law and rules of service irrespective of the ethnic affiliation of crime perpetrators.

He stuck to this allegation even after Prosecutor Catrina Gustafsson presented him with a report from the spring of 1992, informing Kljajic that 15,000 Muslims had left Zvornik.

He said that there was nothing he could do, suggesting that the Muslim civilians left due to military activities not because they were deported.