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Maletic, former Assistant Commander of a VRS battalion in Grbavica, said that prisoners, who were held in Kula prison, were brought to a division line one night in 1992 in order to set up “fortifications”.
“Some tried to flee, but soldiers opened fire at them, killing two of them,” Maletic said, adding that he made a report about that.
According to Maletic’s testimony, fire was opened at the prisoners, who were fleeing, so that they would not reveal VRS positions to the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, BiH.
Maletic began testifying in defence of Mladic on Wednesday, May 28, when he said that snipers of the Army of BiH “killed a number of civilians in Grbavica and Vraca” during the ceasefire.
Mladic, former Commander of VRS, is charged with terrorising civilians in Sarajevo through long-lasting shelling and sniping, genocide in Srebrenica and seven other municipalities, the prosecution of Bosniaks and Croats and taking UNPROFOR members hostage.
Calling upon Maletic’s allegation that the top leaders of VRS issued “a permanent order” to respect the Geneva Conventions, judge Bakone Moloto asked the witness what he did to make sure that a ban on forced labour by prisoners of war, as defined under the Convention, would be respected.
“I did nothing… The Battalion Commander gave an order to bring those men,” Maletic said.
When asked by presiding judge Alfons Orie why he failed to undertake an investigation about the incident, the witness suggested that not all military duties were known to him, as a reserve officer, adding that he sent the report to a higher-instance command, which did not do anything about it.
After having been presented with wartime notes by Ratko Mladic, indicating that there were cases of “rape of women, even Serb women”, and robbing of the non-Serb population in Grbavica, Maletic said that he “did not know” about that and that he “was not informed about it”.
At the same time, the witness said that those crimes were not committed by members of his Battalion.
“The Civil police was in charge of the happenings deep inside our territories,” he said.
Maletic said that he “did not know” that Bosniaks and Croats were expelled from Grbavica.
The trial of Mladic is due to continue on Friday, May 30.
