Forensics Expert at Mladic Trial Provides Breakdown of Tomasica Victims
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Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, has been charged with persecution of Bosniaks and Croats, which reached the scale of genocide in municipalities such as Prijedor.
Hague prosecutors allege that the victims in the Tomasica mass grave were killed by Bosnian Serb forces commanded by Mladic in July 1992, as part of a campaign of ethnic cleansing.
Testifying for the prosecution, Tabeau presented the results of a demographic report she wrote on the Tomasica mass grave. She said 378 bodies were identified through DNA analysis. Seven victims couldn’t be identified, because there were no DNA samples to analyze.
Tabeau said that according to official lists of missing persons and the 1991 census, 320 Tomasica victims were Bosniaks, making up 95.8 percent of the total number. The remains of one Croat, one Serb, and 12 victims of other ethnic groups were also found in the Tomasica mass grave.
Tabeau said these numbers were characteristic of the national breakdown of the total number of missing persons from Prijedor, 2,580.
Tabeau also noted that all of the exhumed victims disappeared in July 1992, specifically on July 20, July 23 and July 25. Demographic analysis showed that all of the missing people were from villages in the municipality of Prijedor, near the Tomasica mine, but also from the Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje camps.
Tabeau will continue her testimony on July 7.
Mladic is also on trial for genocide in Srebrenica, taking UN peacekeepers hostage and terrorising the local population of Sarajevo.
