Mladic Witness: Srebrenica Victims ‘Killed in Ambush’

Expert witness Dusan Pavlovic told Mladic’s war crimes trial at the Hague Tribunal on Wednesday that on the night of July 12-13, 1995, a column of about 700 Bosnian Army soldiers and civilians were killed in an ambush by Serb troops while crossing a road.

Pavlovic said that in the end, the death toll reached between 2,000 and 3,000 after the column tried to break through Serb lines.

According to eyewitnesses’ statements, they were killed when they came across a Serb ambush, but also in firefights, while some committed suicide, Pavlovic said.

Mladic’s defence lawyer Branko Lukic quoted several statements which survivors from the column gave to Bosnian Army officials after having arrived in the town of Tuzla.

A document issued by the defence ministry of Bosnia and Herzegovina said that following a Bosnian Serb artillery attack on a line of people crossing the road between Konjevic Polje and Nova Kasaba, eyewitnesses “saw about 1,000 people who had been killed next to the asphalt road”, Lukic said.

According to another eyewitness quoted in the same document, Serb forces “fired grenades from a tank at the column of people, killing about 500 Bosniaks”, he added.

Commenting on the excerpts quoted by Lukic, Pavlovic said he applied “a conservative approach” when assessing that “at least 700” people from the column were killed while crossing the road.

“I chose their smallest estimates,” the witness said.

Former Bosnian Serb military chief Mladic is on trial for genocide against about 7,000 Bosniaks from Srebrenica.

According to the charges against him, about 15,000 Bosniak men, a third of whom were armed, began a breakout from Srebrenica on July 12, 1995, after it fell to Bosnian Serb forces. The Serbs set up ambushes for the Bosniaks who were fleeing.

He is also on trial for terrorising Sarajevo during the city’s siege, persecuting non-Serbs across the country, and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.

At the beginning of Wednesday’s hearing, prosecutors cross-examined a former member of wartime Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic’s security detail, who alleged on Tuesday that the Bosniak leader approved a deadly attack Sarajevo’s Markale market in the winter of 1994.

However the majority of the cross-examination was conducted behind closed doors to conceal the identity of the protected witness.

During the open part of the hearing the witness confirmed that some of the members of the Biseri security unit, which guarded Izetbegovic, were Serbs.

The trial continues on Thursday.