Bosnian Serb Police Chief Denies Genocide Charges
This post is also available in: Bosnian
Saric rejected his guilt for all three counts of the indictment which charges him as the Commander of the Special Police Brigade units, with the Bosnian Serb Ministry of Interior.
He is charged with knowingly helping members of the joint criminal enterprise to commit genocide, which resulted in 40,000 forcibly resettled Bosniaks and 7,000 killed men and boys.
According to the indictment, as Commander of the Bosnian Serb Interior Ministry’s Special Police Brigade, Saric was responsible for police units which were operating around Srebrenica at the time.
Saric is charged with issuing an order to policemen to watch over the Bratunac-Konjevic Polje road and capture several thousand Bosniaks who tried to escape the UN-protected ‘safe zone’ of Srebrenica by fleeing through the woods. The men were shot at when they fled.
“Members of the Special Police Jahorina units executed 15 to 20 of them at a house in the village of Sandici. After that, they took several hundred prisoners to agricultural warehouses in the village of Kravica, where around 1,000 more of them were executed,” the indictment reads.
Considering he has pleaded not guilty, Saric’s trial will begin in the next 30 to 60 days.
Two months ago, Saric was also sentenced to 14 years in jail for sending several dozen detained civilians to prison camps and others to their deaths in Sarajevo in 1992.
