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A defence witness told Ratko Mladic’s trial in The Hague that Bosniaks were killed near the Bosnian Serbs’ Manjaca prison camp in 1992, but blamed the crimes on civilian police.
Radomir Radinkovic, a former intelligence officer with the Bosnian Serb Army in Manjaca near Banja Luka, testified on Tuesday that 24 Bosniaks from Sanski Most suffocated to death in a truck which Serb police used to transport them to the prison camp.
A number of prisoners from Prijedor were also killed in front of the camp in the summer of 1992, the witness said.
Radinkovic said that some of the 1,430 prisoners from Prijedor in August 1992 were killed while they waited in 11 buses to be admitted into the camp.
“We did not know if they were beaten or executed,” said Radinkovic, but later added that he was told that “they were taken from buses and killed”.
“I couldn’t hear screams, but the military policemen did and they told us… the military policemen saw them being taken and shot,” said Radinkovic.
Former Bosnian Serb Army chief Ratko Mladic is on trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia for the persecution of non-Serbs in Bosnian Krajina.
He is also on trial for his role in orchestrating the Srebrenica genocide, terrorising the population of Sarajevo, and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
Radinkovic began his testimony to the UN-backed court on Monday, when he said that Bosniak and Croat prisoners held at the Manjaca camp in 1992 were treated according to international conventions and were regularly visited by the Red Cross.
But while answering questions from prosecutor Caroline, Radinkovic confirmed that eight Bosniak prisoners were also beaten to death.
“It was done by the police, unfortunately,” said the witness, who insisted that military policemen couldn’t stop the crime.
Presiding judge Alphons Orie asked why he didn’t stop the civilian police. “It wasn’t my job to call on them to act humanely and morally,” Radinkovic replied.
He described how 24 Bosniaks from Sanski Most suffocated while being transported to Manjaca by truck.
“They suffocated because the truck was covered. It was almost hermetically sealed and the weaker ones suffocated,” said Radinkovic. “Nobody killed them,” he added.
He said that civilian policemen from the escort wanted to leave the bodies at the camp, but the Manjaca management forced them to take them back to Sanski Most.
Radinkovic admitted that prisoners in Manjaca were beaten, but said this was done by regular policemen or military policemen who acted irresponsibly and were removed because of this.
The trial continues on Wednesday.
