Bosnian Serb MPs Srebrenica Genocide Trial Opens
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The trial of Vasic, who was elected to the Republika Srpska Peoples Assembly at last Octobers general elections as a candidate of the Serb Democratic Party founded by Radovan Karadzic, opened at the Bosnian state court on Thursday.
Vasic was the commander of the Zvornik police headquarters and chief of the Public Security Centre in the town in the summer of 1995, when Bosnian Serb forces killed more than 7,000 Bosniak men and boys.
His indictment caused some war victims groups to call for a ban on people accused of such crimes taking up positions of authority.
According to the charges, Vasic and two other defendants, ex-police officers Danilo Zoljic and Radomir Pantic, assisted in the forcible resettlement of the Srebrenica population as well as the capture and execution of men and boys in Bratunac, Srebrenica and Zvornik.
Prosecutor Ibro Bulic said that during the operation in Srebrenica, civil police searched Bosniak houses, aided the expulsion of local residents from nearby Potocari, guarded captives and ensured their transportation to temporary detention and execution locations.
The indictment alleges that Vasic was in charge of the work of all the police forces in Zvornik.
He undertook control over officers from the Public Security Centre in Zvornik, issued orders to his subordinates and ensured technical support with the aim of executing a plan of forcible resettlement. He did not undertake any measures to protect the local civilian population, Bulic said.
Zoljic, the former commander of the Zvornik police special units and Pantic, commander of the First Company of the special units, knew about the plan and issued orders to help implement it, the indictment alleges.
According to the charges, First Company officers participated in the detention of male captives in the Bratunac area on July 13, 1995. The captives were taken away and shot on the following day.
The indictment alleges that Zvornik police officers escorted the captives to Kozluk, where they were shot, and guarded a community centre in Pilica where about 500 men were killed.
Two other defendants in the trial, Miodrag Josipovic and Branimir Tesic, are charged with having participated in the forcible resettlement of the civilian population from Potocari on July 12 and 13 and the transportation and detention of more than 1,000 men and boys who were later killed in Bratunac.
Josipovic is charged in his capacity as the chief of the Public Security Centre in Bratunac and Tesic as the deputy commander of the towns police station.
The defence did not offer an introductory statement to the court on Thursday, saying that it would do so once the prosecution had presented all its evidence.
The police and these people who are charged in this case were not participants in a joint criminal enterprise, said Aleksandar Lazarevic, the defence lawyer for defendant Vasic.
It is very possible that there were individual situations in which police officers participated, but these people cannot be held responsible for that, he added.
The trial will continue on April 9.
