Mladic Witness: UN Peacekeepers Were Prisoners of War

Vojvodic, former security officer in the Logistics Base of the Bosnian Serb Army in Jahorina, said that on June 26, 1995 – the day after NATO started bombing Bosnian Serb Army – he saw unokwn soldiers, who tied two members of the “blue helmets” to a column.

According to the witness, those soldiers told him that the UNPROFOR members were “prisoners of war”, because they “chose the other side” and there were doubts they “were navigating NATO aircrafts”.

Vojvodic said that shortly after that he was ordered to go to a nearby warehouse Jahorinski Potok, which was already bombarded by the NATO. He also said that he saw there another five or six “blue helmets”, tied to a columns. He said he was ordered to take care that prisoners are safe, that no one hurts them and that they are not approached by other soldiers.

Mladic is charged as a commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, the army who took more than 200 UNPROFOR members as hostages and used some of them as human shield against the NATO airstrikes, which started at the end of 1995.

The same night he was ordered to take care of the safety of the “blue helmets”, after an order of his superior Zdravko Tolimir, former intelligence chief of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Main Headquarters, Vojvodic transferred all the prisoners to his base, where they were kept until June 18, when they were released.

“I claim that since than no one threatened them… From May 26 until June 18, they were never threatened physically or mentally,” witness sad adding that they were treated with respect, according to Geneva conventions.

Vojvodic said that prisoners had an access to a doctor, that Red Cross payed them a visit and that they were able to buy fruits at the market and purchase video cassettes.

Prosecutors tried to prove during the cross-examination that “blue helmets” were hostages of the Bosnian Serb Army and that they were threatened they would be killed in case NATO continues bombing and they presented the film showing a member of the Bosnian Serb Army who said to a prisoner trough a translator:”You are going to die… for the sake of NATO”.

Vojvodic replied that he did not hear or see that. He made a same comment after a video footage showing Serbian fighter tieing UNPROFOR member to a pillar in Jahorinski Potok while saying: “There, let Kozirjev (Andrej, then Russian foreign minister) save you.”

After prosecutor quoted Mladic, who told UNPROFOR commander Rupert Smith that “blue helmets” will be “killed, no matter where are the NATO airstrikes”, Vojvodic said that “he couldn’t have known that”, because it was “beyond his level of decision making”.

However, witness confirmed that “blue helmets” were exposed to risk in order to make NATO stop bombardment, so it wouldn’t kill “its own soldiers”. He called that “military trick”.

“However, they were not in greater danger from NATO bombardment than our soldiers who were nearby,” Vojvodic said.

Mladic is charged with genocide in Srebrenica, persecution of Muslims and Croats, which reached the scale of genocide in six municipalities, as well as terrorising the population of Sarajevo citizens through a series of shelling and sniping incidents.

Trial continues on September 9.