Mladic Witness: Serbs Committed ‘Massive Crime’ at Srebrenica

During cross-examination at the UN-backed court in The Hague on Thursday, defence witness Kovac admitted that the massacres of thousands of Bosniaks from Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb Army troops were criminal.

Asked by prosecutor Adam Weber to give an example of a crime against Bosniaks, Kovac replied: “The massive crime in Srebrenica… There were some other lesser-known crimes during the war.”

Mladic, the wartime commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, is on trial for the genocide of around 7,000 Bosniaks from Srebrenica in the days that followed his troops’ occupation of the town on July 11, 1995.

He is also being tried for terrorising the population of Sarajevo with a long-running campaign of sniping and shelling during Serb forces’ 1992-95 siege of the Bosnian capital.

Prosecutor Veber said that Bosnian Serb Army kept Sarajevo “under siege… to make the enemy surrender”.

Kovac however argued that this was a legitimate military blockade.

“The difference is that a blockade does not force those inside to leave the city. That is a legitimate military action, which is undertaken by all armies,” he said.

Kovac said that prosecutor’s suggestion that Serb snipers wanted to “spread fear” among civilians in Sarajevo was false.

He claimed that the local Sarajevo authorities and Bosniak armed forces were responsible for the suffering of civilians in the city because they did not take them out of the conflict zone, which was their obligation according to the laws of war.

Prosecutor Weber quoted Mladic as saying that his forces would shell Sarajevo until it made people in the city “go crazy”.

Kovac responded that this was just “a derogatory phrase for neutralising people defending themselves”.

The prosecutor reminded him that Mladic’s forces’ overall military aim, proclaimed by the Bosnian Serb parliament in May 1992, was the separation of Serbs from Muslims and Croats.

But Kovac responded: “Initial formations of armed people separated the peoples, and the armies came across this situation.”

The prosecutor then asserted that the Bosnian Serb Army “conquered territory by force”.

But the witness replied that “all three [Bosniak, Croat and Serb] armies conquered by force in the civil war”.

Mladic is also charged with the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats which reached the scale of genocide in six municipalities, and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.

The trial continues on Monday.