Mladic Ordered Troops to Protect Srebrenica Captives
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Bojan Subotic, a former Bosnian Serb military policeman, told the UN-backed court on Monday that hundreds of Bosniak soldiers surrendered to him on July 13, 1995 near Srebrenica.
Subotic said that some of them told him that their commanders were killing those who want to surrender. He testified that two of those captives, took him to the nearby woods, where he saw a horrible scene of around 500 corpses of Bosniak fighters.
They were in groups of two, ten and 50 The wounds were irregular, as if made by mines and bombs, a few were shot It smelled, it was very hot, he said.
He recalled hearing gunfire earlier that day from that area and wondering what happened, as there were no Serb units there.
A group of around 200 Bosniak soldiers then arrived and surrendered, he continued.
He took the captured Bosniaks to a football stadium in Nova Kasaba and then Mladic arrived.
Mladic shook hands with the prisoners, told them about the war and said they would be exchanged He gave us a strict order to guard the prisoners, to write [their names] down He said buses would come and that we should give them to civilian police in Bratunac, recalled Subotic.
He said that Mladic told him: Kid, I want all of them to get to Bratunac.
The witness said he gave the prisoners 150 loaves of bread, which he took from Serb bakeries, for which he was later sued.
According to Mladics indictment, the captured Bosniaks from Bratunac were taken to several locations near Zvornik where they were killed by Serb forces.
Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, is charged with genocide against more than 7,000 Bosniaks from Srebrenica in July 1995, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats which reached the scale of genocide in some municipalities terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
The trial continues on Tuesday.
