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Defence witness Ostoja Marjanovic told the Hague Tribunal on Monday that he only heard about the mass graves at the Tomasica and Jakarina Kosa mines in 2003, via testimony at the UN-backed court, despite the fact that he was the director of the Ljubija mining company which was in charge of both sites where the bodies of Bosniaks and Croats were buried in 1992.
Marjanovic said however that he believed the Prijedor police and not the Bosnian Serb Army buried the corpses.
He said that he based his assumption on the fact that Prijedor police officers were also in charge of clearing the bodies after mass killings on Koricanske Stijene on Mount Vlasic in 1992.
He said that he did not know where the bodies in the Tomasica and Jakarina Kosa mines came from.
Asked if he knew that in June 1992, non-Serbs were killed in one of his mines, Marjanovic replied: “It is possible. I don’t know the details, but it’s possible.”
The Hague prosecution seeking to prove that the hundreds of bodies found at the mines in Tomasica and Jakarina Kosa were those of victims killed by Bosnian Serb forces under Mladic’s command in an ethnic cleansing campaign in 1992.
Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, is charged with genocide in several municipalities, among them Prijedor. He is also on trial for genocide in Srebrenica, terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
Marjanovic continues his testimony on Tuesday.
