Mladic Witness: ‘Unknown Serbs’ Killed Sanski Most Bosniaks

Defence witness Branko Basara, who was the commander of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Sanska brigade, testified at the Hague Tribunal on Tuesday that the killing of 16 Bosniak men at a bridge near the village of Vrhpolje at the end of May 1992 was committed by a group of unknown members of Serbian forces.

Basara told the UN-backed court that his soldiers, who were also present at the time, could not prevent the killings.

Basara said he went to the crime scene shortly afterwards, but did not have the time or resources to conduct an investigation.

The witness denied the prosecutor’s suggestion that he knew the leader of the ‘unknown’ group of Serbs, Jadranko Palija. A Bosnian court sentenced Palija to 28 years in prison for crimes in Sanski Most.

Basara also testified that there was a mass killing in the village of Hrustovo at the same time.

The prosecutor cited his earlier statement, when he said that among the victims who were later found in mass graves were Bosniak fighters “dressed in civilian clothes”, and asked the witness whether the children and women who were exhumed from the same mass grave were fighters.

“Everybody knows that they did not participate in the fighting,” Basara responded.

According to the indictment against Mladic, Serbian forces killed 22 unarmed civilians in a garage in Hrustovo on May, 31, 1992.

The prosecutor cited an order issued by Basara on June 3, 1992, in which he forbade “genocide” against women, children and disabled people. He suggested that Basara used these words as a result of the crimes in Vrhpolje and Hrustovo.

“My soldiers did not do that. One can learn from other people’s mistakes,” Basara replied. He said he was “afraid” that similar atrocities could happen.

Mladic is on trial for the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats from Sanski Most, as well as for the Srebrenica genocide, terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.

Basara confirmed that his brigade conducted a disarmament operation in the hamlet of Mahala and in Hrustovo at the end of 1992, but he denied the prosecutor’s claim that the villages were “randomly shelled”. He said that people were given three hours to leave the village, and that “those who wanted to fight” stayed in Mahala afterwards. He claimed that the shells were used in fighting with Bosniak forces.

Last year, the Bosnian state court filed an indictment against Basara for some of the crimes committed in the Sanski Most area.

Mladic’s trial continues on Wednesday.