VRS Moved People Forcibly

Testifying at the trial of Ratko Mladic for genocide and other crimes in Bosnia and Herzegovina, the Prosecution’s military expert Ewan Brown says that the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, forcibly moved the non-Serb population in Bosanska Krajina in the summer of 1992.

Expert Brown analysed a number of documents issued by the First Krajina Corps of VRS.
 
Commenting on a combat report dated June 1, 1992 about military operations in which the Corps occupied several Krajina municipalities and took “a large number of prisoners”, he said that the document also indicated that the movement of population happened and that the “cleansing” operation would be continued. 
 
Brown said that, as part of an operation for “disarming Muslim extremists” in Bosanska Krajina, the VRS captured “a number of people”, whom it transferred outside the Republika Srpska, RS, territories later on.
 
According to the Prosecution’s expert, this was done with the framework of achieving the strategic military goals proclaimed by the leadership at the beginning of May 1992 and adopted by the RS Assembly later on.
 
General Mladic, the then Commander of VRS, is charged with the persecution of Muslims and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, which reached the scale of genocide in seven municipalities.
 
Calling on Mladic’s notes from a meeting held on May 6, 1992, Brown said that the separation of Serbs from Muslims and Croats was the first strategic goal of Serb authorities. The division of Sarajevo and erasing of border between Serbs along the River Drina were among the goals too.
 
Brown said that the VRS was “actually a transformed JNA”, which “formally withdrew” from Bosnia and Herzegovina in late May. 
 
In order to prove his allegation, he quoted Mladic’s note from a meeting with the then Chief of JNA General Headquarters Blagoje Adzic held in late April 1992. According to Mladic’s notes, general Adzic said that JNA units would stay in Bosnia and Herzegovina and serve as the basis for forming the VRS.
 
According to Brown, JNA had previously played “a dual role” in Bosnia and Herzegovina by trying to reduce tensions and, at the same time, arming the Serb side.
 
The Prosecutors and their expert tried to prove that Mladic was aware of crimes committed throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina prior to being appointed Commander of VRS by quoting a note by general Mladic that great damage had been caused by Zeljko Raznatovic, known as Arkan, in Bijeljina, as well as burning, robberies and murders in Foca, bombing of Sarajevo and murder of Muslims in the vicinity of Bratunac.
 
Brown is due to continue testifying tomorrow, November 19. At the hearing today Mladic’s Defence completed the cross-examination of Prosecution’s demographic expert Ewa Tabeau.
 
Mladic’s Defence attorney Dejan Ivetic suggested that Tabeau was biased, because, in her report she referred to the crime in Srebrenica as “massacre”.
 
Tabeau responded by saying that, according to statistical data, more than 7,000 Muslims went missing after the fall of Srebrenica in July 1995 and that their bodies were exhumed and identified later on. 
 
“This makes the use of term ‘massacre’ justified,” Tabeau said.