Bosniak Prisoners Murdered in Rogatica

A defence witness admitted at Ratko Mladic’s trial that some prisoners held by Bosnian Serb forces at the Rasadnik camp in Rogatica were murdered in 1992 by ‘extremists’.

Mile Ujic, the president of the executive board of the Rogatica municipality in the 1990s, told Mladic’s war crimes trial at the Hague Tribunal on Monday that he was aware of an “incident” when a group of Bosniak prisoners from the Rasadnik camp were murdered.

Answering questions from the prosecution, Ujic said that from the beginning there were rumours that murders were committed by a Serb unit chief called Dragoje Paunovic; a fact that was later confirmed by an investigation.

Paunovic, the former leader of a unit within the Bosnian Serb Army’s Rogatica battalion, was jailed for 20 years in prison in October 2006 for participating in the execution of 27 civilians who were unlawfully detained at the Rasadnik camp on August 15, 1992.

Ujic was presented with a statement that he gave as a defence witness at Paunovic’s trial at the Bosnian court, where he said that “some extremists” had committed the murders.

“I stand by that because a reasonable human can’t do that, only an extremist who has a confused mind and I don’t exclude him [Paunovic] from that, either,” Ujic told the Hague court.

Ujic previously testified at Mladic’s trial last Thursday that Bosnian Serb troops had tried to keep civilians in Rogatica safe by detaining them for their own protection.

Mladic is on trial for the persecution and expulsion of Bosniaks and Croats from 15 municipalities controlled by Bosnian Serb forces during the war, including Rogatica.

He is also charged with genocide in Srebrenica, terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.

Prosecutors further questioned Ujic about attacks by Serbian forces on the villages of Kozadra and Kramer Selo near Rogatica in May 1992. The witness argued that these settlements were not “unarmed villages with refugees”, and that the attacks were mounted to combat armed groups.

Ujic also said that Bosniak units around Rogatica were “well trained and supplied”.

“I think that the size of their strength was around a battalion, which was very well trained and organised. They were especially well trained for terrorist acts and they were very ingenious there,” he said.

He recalled that at the beginning of the conflict in Rogatica, after one Serb died, he participated in negotiations with Bosniak forces about handing over the body.

“They told us that day that they wouldn’t hand over the body until they killed ten or a hundred more Serbs, and then we could talk,” Ujic said.

The trial continues on Tuesday.