Srebrenica Witness Recalls Lines of Corpses

“They were lying on their bellies. One was next to another, and there were several lines,” the protected prosecution witness who testified under the codename SM-109, told the court in Sarajevo on Wednesday.

The witness could not say exact how many corpses were lined up alongside a trench which, according to his estimate, was ten metres long, six metres wide and two metres deep. At the Petkovci dam, he also saw soldiers who he did not know, he said.

Ex-soldierd Ostoja Stanisic and Marko Milosevic are on trial over the killings at the dam near the village of Petkovci, where around 1,000 prisoners from Srebrenica were murdered in July 1995.

According to the indictment, Stanisic was a commander with the Sixth Battalion of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Zvornik Brigade, which was stationed in Petkovci, while Milosevic was his deputy.

The witness said that he was told to come with a bulldozer from the Zvornik brigade headquarters to the dam. Because he did not know the way to the dam, he said that he first went to Petkovci, where he saw two soldiers who told him how to get there.

Prosecutor Predrag Tomic said that in his previous statement, the witness said that an officer in the Zvornik brigade headquarters told him to report to Petkovci before going to the dam, and that he met two soldiers when leaving the headquarters, who told him the way. The witness said he could not be sure if he met the soldiers in the headquarters building.

He also said – after defendant Stanisic was pointed out to him in the courtroom – that he did not see him at the Zvornik brigade headquarters, in Petkovci, or at the dam.

“I do not know this man at all,” said the witness.

Because the witness gave a different account of these events, the prosecutor said that at the next hearing, scheduled for March 12, he will show the witness a video recording of his statement.