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The former president of the municipality of Srbac, Milos Milincic, on Monday said that only “around 60 non-Serbs” out of the 897 who lived there before the war left the municipality – and left “because of the economic reasons”.
However, he changed his statement during the cross-examination, after the Hague prosecution presented him with the data from the Republika Srpska’s state security service in Banjaluka, which showed that more than two-thirds of Muslims and Croats left the municipality during the 1992-5 war.
According to those data, out of 940 Muslims in 1991, only 300 of them remained in Srbac four years later. There were 145 Croats before the conflict, and only 50 afterwards.
Milincic admitted that the data were accurate, but pointed out that he “had no knowledge” about such matters in the war.
“I thought the majority of people did not leave Srbac. I knew people were leaving, but I was not obliged to know those data, and I did not know them,” Milincic said.
Former Bosnian Serb military chief Mladic is charged with the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats in areas under Bosnian Serb control, genocide in Srebrenica and several other municipalities, as well as terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
Milincic explained that “around 60 people” had addressed him about leaving, and he had intervened to allow them to go to Croatia. He later said that it might be more precise to talk about “60 families, not individuals”.
Milincic also said that more than 40 Muslims from Srbac fought for the Bosnian Serb Army, of whom 22 were wounded.
The witness said Mladic had supported his stance that the Srbac brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army should not get into fights with the neighboring municipality of Davor in Croatia in 1992, even though Srbac was shelled from the Croatian municipality.
“Mladic laughed, he was in a good mood, and he said: You are right, leave those fools, do not get into a direct fight with Croats,” Milincic recalled him as saying.
Mladic’s trial continues on November 18.
