Witness Exhumed Corpses
This post is also available in: Bosnian
Witness Zarko Savic, a former member of the Engineering Unit based in Karakaj, near Zvornik, said that one of the locations he dug out using a dredger was situated near a dam in the vicinity of Petkovci village.
According to the witness’ testimony, a man named Damjan Lazarevic, whom he considered his superior officer, showed him the locations where he should dig.
“We came underneath the dam. Damjan said: ‘Dig here.’ The same thing, corpses, smell…” the witness said.
He explained that, at that location they dug a grave, which was three metres-long, two metres-wide and two- or three-metres deep. He said that they dug until they reached tough ground, because they considered that “there was nothing more to be dug out”.
Savic testified at the trial of Ostoja Stanisic and Marko Milosevic, who are charged with having participated in crimes committed on a dam in Petkovci, Zvornik municipality, where about 1,000 Bosniak men and boys from Srebrenica, who had been captured, were shot in July 1995.
According to the charges, Stanisic commanded the Sixth Battalion of the Zvornik Brigade with the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, while Milosevic was his Deputy.
Six days ago the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina granted the witness immunity from criminal prosecution. He said that he felt uncomfortable executing those orders. The Trial Chamber did not allow him to respond to Prosecutor Predrag Tomic’s question on whether what was done was a crime.
According to the witness’ testimony, they exhumed the corpses at night and loaded them onto trucks. As he said, there may have been two trucks next to the dam in Petkovci.
Besides the exhumation of those corpses, Savic said that he participated in the exhumation at two locations in Orahovac and one on Branjevo. The witness did not know where the truck drivers transported the corpses to.
Following the examination of this witness, a statement given during the investigation by witness Tihomir Jerkic, who died in July this year, was read in the courtroom. As indicated in the statement, the witness heard that prisoners were held in the school building in Petkovci, but he did not know what happened to them.
The trial is due to continue on October 16.
