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Former Bosnian Serb Army officer Luka Dragicevic said he circulated the document, which said that Muslims were “genetically inferior” to Serbs, to his troops during the 1992-95 war.
Dragicevic told the trial of Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic at the Hague Tribunal on Wednesday that that he had produced the wartime document which said that Serbs were genetically stronger, better-looking and more intelligent than Bosnian Muslims.
In the document that he gave to his units, Dragicevic wrote that ‘Poturice’ (‘half-Turks’, an offensive name for Bosniak converts to Islam) were “genetically inferior”.
Dragicevic produced the document in his role as the wartime Assistant Commander for Morale, Religious and Political Affairs of the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army.
When asked by prosecutor Adam Weber if he still believed what was written in it, Dragicevic replied: “In essence, that is how the things stand…from my experience.”
“That is racism and you are a racist,” prosecutor Weber suggested.
“Of course not,” Dragicevic responded.
Weber then confronted him with a sentence from the document which said that “we are genetically stronger, better, more beautiful and more intelligent” than Bosniaks.
“That is my experience of life. I stand by my words,” the witness confirmed, although he added that the document “also contained some propaganda designed in order to boost soldiers’ morale”.
The prosecutor also quoted a passage from the document which said that “a well-tempered punch on the nose will force the ‘Poturice’ to change their religion again”.
Dragicevic again confirmed that he still believed what he wrote.
“Yes, I am saying that they frequently changed their religion and ethnicity… and that they can invent a new religion and ethnicity very easily. I knew how we should fight them in order to be successful,” he said.
Dragicevic was testifying in defence of Mladic, who is on trial for with in Srebrenica and seven other municipalities, the persecution of the non-Serb population, terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
