Boric Denies Expulsion of Non-Serb Population at Mladic Trial

Prosecutor Arthur Traldi presented Boric with evidence regarding the murder of more than 100 Bosniaks in the village of Biljani, near Kljuc, on July 10, 1992.

“I knew nothing about it…and I don’t know nothing now either,” Boric said.

Boric didn’t change his statement when Traldi quoted a statement given by the chief of staff of the Second Krajiski Crops, who had said that he knew about the killings.

Traldi asked Boric whether he knew that the victims were exhumed from a mass grave after the war, less than a kilometer away from the military barracks in Laniste, where a brigade under his command was located. Boric said he didn’t know this.

The indictment which charges Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, with the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, alleges that Konjic was one of the municipalities in which the persecution of the non-Serb population reached the scale of genocide.

Boric confirmed that a detention facility for captives existed in Drvar, where the Command of the Second Krajiski Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army was located. Boric denied knowledge of the bodies of captives being discovered in mass graves later on.

“The may have been exchanged,” Boric said.

Prosecutor Traldi said that based on documents from the military detention camp in Manjaca, Boric’s forces captured and transported Bosniak and Croat civilians to that detention camp for no reason. Boric said, “I don’t know about it.”

Boric said that the Bosnian Serb Army had nothing to do with the mass departure of Bosniaks and Croats from Kljuc. In response, Traldi quoted from Mladic’s wartime journal entries, which stated that 2000 Bosniaks resided in Kljuc in November 1992, and 17,000 Bosniaks had lived there before the war.

“That’s what’s written there,” Boric confirmed. He repeated that he knew nothing about the mass departure of the non-Serb population from his zone of responsibility.

Prosecutor Traldi said that contrary to Boric’s allegations, the Second Krajiski Corps was involved to a great extent in the forcible resettlement of the non-Serb population of Kljuc.

At the end of his testimony, which was given via video link, Boric simply said “No.”

Mladic is also on trial for the Srebrenica genocide, terrorizing the population of Sarajevo, and taking UNPROFOR members hostage.

The trial will continue on Tuesday, April 28.