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The Bosnian Serb Army shelled Srebrenica in July 1995 even though there were no military targets in the enclave, said the former deputy commander of the Dutch battalion, Robert Franken, in a statement read out at the genocide trial of Bosnian Serb ex-soldier Aleksandar Cvetkovic on Tuesday in Sarajevo.
Once the Bosnian Serb Army had occupied Srebrenica on July 11, 1995, thousands of local civilians fled towards the nearby village of Potocari, where the Dutch UN troops had their base, Franken said in the statement he gave to the Hague Tribunal in 2000.
He said that the UN agreed that the Bosnian Serb Army could evacuate the civilians, but its commander Ratko Mladic, who is now on trial for genocide in Srebrenica and other crimes, requested that the men be separated from the women and children in order to check whether the men were war criminals.
According to Franken, about 300 men had taken refuge inside the Dutch battalions base and between 500 and 600 outside it.
Franken said that the men were taken to a white house in Potocari, where they were examined and subjected to violence. He said that he received a report about nine men having been killed next to the white house.
He also said that Serb troops did not allow the Dutch soldiers to escort the bus that took the men away from the white house.
Cvetkovic, a former member of the Tenth Reconnaissance Squad of the Bosnian Serb Army, is charged with having participated in the execution of more than 900 men and boys from Srebrenica on July 16, 1995.
The trial is due to continue on September 9.
