Bosnian Serb Soldiers Crimes Were Isolated Incidents
This post is also available in: Bosnian
Defence witness Vladimir Lukic, who was prime minister of Republika Srpska from January 1993 to August 1994, told Mladics war cimes trial at the Hague Tribunal on Tuesday said that he used to inform Bosnian Serb Army officers that some of their soldiers committed thefts and other crimes in 1993.
Generally I did not think the whole army was doing it, but individuals. However, I had no authority over those individuals, and that is the reason that the army was informed, in order to find who was responsible, Lukic said, adding that many among those who committed crimes were not true soldiers.
The Hague prosecutors presented a report that Lukic sent to the Security Service Centre in Sarajevo about rapes in the Novo Sarajevo area, which said that Serbs were also sexually abused by soldiers. The witness replied that the government of Republika Srpska did not think that only crimes against Serbs should be prosecuted.
You are taking this document out of context. Those who did that, they did discriminate between Croat, Serb or Muslim women. They did it dishonourably, and none of us [politicians in Republika Srpska] could even think that Muslim woman should be raped, nor a Serb woman, said Lukic.
He said that the Republika Srpska government advocated the prosecution of all crimes and added that in the Sarajevo area many more Serb women were raped than Muslim or Croat women.
In response to a question from the prosecutor, Lukic said that he believed that Bosnia was historically Serbian territory, but that everyone should [be able to] live in the country.
Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, is charged with the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats, genocide in Srebrenica and seven other municipalities, terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
The trial continues on Thursday.
