Commander Saric’s Motivational Speech

Ljubodrag Gajic said that, on July 11, 1995 Goran Saric, Commander of special police, held a motivational speech in front of members of his unit, who went to the field in the Bratunac area that day.

“I do not remember the details, but the speech essentially had a motivational character, because many people, who had never participated in a combat task before, were present,” the witness said, adding that he had not seen Saric before that and that he had not heard about him from others either.

The Defence asked the witness whether the indictee, who was present in the courtroom, was the person, who held the mentioned speech on Mount Jahorina. Gajic said that he could not remember that given that so many years had passed.

Saric, former Commander of the Special Police Brigade, is charged with having ordered members of police to guard the road between Bratunac and Konjevic Polje and capture Srebrenica residents, who walked through the woods in an attempt to reach the territories controlled by the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, BiH.

The indictment alleges that members of the Special Police Brigade then participated in escorting several hundreds of captives to the Agricultural Co-operative in Kravica, where they killed them.

Witness Gajic said that he arrived in Bjelovac village, near Bratunac on July 11 and that he went from that village to Potocari together with other members of his unit the following day. As he said, he stayed in that area until July 16, 1995.

He told the Court that he once entered a factory, where the local population was waiting, as he said, to be evacuated.

“I saw that a convoy of buses and trucks was formed and that people walked towards them. I saw that men were separated from others. Members of police and my unit participated in the separation. The men were then sent to a house,” he said.

He said that, one night they went to Kravica, where members of special police from Sekovici had been. He mentioned that, after having come out of the bus, they were tasked with controlling the road leading to Konjevic Polje.

The witness said that he heard a burst of fire that he was told, later on, that the captives had been liquidated. Also, he said that he participated in a search of the area on July 16 and that he saw human corpses on that occasion.

Gajic, who testified from Belgrade via video link, said that he was brought to Jahorina in June 1995 after having been arrested in Serbia and that he stayed in BiH for about a month.

The trial is due to continue on June 23.