Voluntary Departure from Visegrad

Milovan Tasic said that, following the departure of the Uzice Corps in May 1992, the situation became chaotic, because paramilitary formations, whose members mistreated and robbed Bosniak families, arrived.

“I did not attend the meeting in the café in Rzavski bregovi, but people told me that Muslim leaders wanted their population to leave. They agreed that they would leave under the aegis of the Red Cross,” the witness said. 

Tasic, a relative of the indictee, was a member of the Company commanded by the indictee, said that he guarded the blue bridge, when a convoy of people from Bosanska Jagodina village passed towards Visegrad.

“Tasic had left 15 or 20 minutes before the convoy passed. He came back after lunch,” the witness said. 

He said that the Bosniak population from many villages stayed in Visegrad.

Ranko Knezevic and Mladjen Sikiric – former drivers with the Republika Srpska Army, VRS – spoke about the departure of the convoy from a square in Visegrad to Olovo. They said that their Commander ordered them to report to the Red Cross, where they were told to join the convoy.

“A line had already been formed. There were many people there. They hurried to the truck as soon as they saw it. They were eager to get on the truck,” witness Sikiric said, adding that he saw uniformed people as well. 

The witnesses said that, upon arrival at the destination, the population got off the truck and continued by foot, while they went back via Sokolac, where they stayed overnight, and continued their trip towards Rogatica and Visegrad the following day.

Knezevic and Sikiric did not see Tasic on their way to the destination or back.

Tasic is charged with having participated, along with Predrag Milisavljevic and Milos Pantelic, members of reserve police forces, in the forced resettlement of Bosniaks from Visegrad on June 14, 1992.  

According to the charges, on June 15, 1992 Milisavljevic and Pantelic escorted buses, transporting captured Bosniak civilians from Rogatica, and participated in their execution near the Paklenik pit, Sokolac municipality. 

Prosecutor Dzevad Muratbegovic asked the witnesses if they knew about the men who stayed in the bus, and that they were taken out on the way to Rogatica, but Knezevic and Sikiric could not say anything about that. 

“I neither saw it nor know anything. At that time I did not hear about it. Later on… ten years later, I heard that… I do not know what to say,” Knezevic said. 

The trial is due to continue on November 5.