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Hague prosecutors said the expert, Dusan Pavlovic, came to his conclusions based on “incomplete data.” Pavlovic began his testimony in December 2015, and said at least 4000-5000 fighters and civilians were killed while fleeing Srebrenica through the woods.
The prosecution described several statements to the contrary, including one statement given by a Srebrenica widow who said her husband wasn’t killed in the woods, but was taken away by Bosnian Serb forces near the UN peacekeeping base in Potocari.
Pavlovic maintained this man was killed in the woods. He said he based his statements on claims from the “men in the woods and not from women.”
The prosecutor asked Pavlovic if the men who identified the deceased may have been mistaken, since they were fearing for their lives at the time. Pavlovic conceded that this was possible but unlikely, as “they all knew each other.”
“These men also had years of military experience, so they were used to danger,” Pavlovic added.
The prosecutors also contested Pavlovic’s argument that some of the mortal remains found in mass graves could have been transferred there after being found in the woods. The prosecution presented a statement which said the body parts of victims from the Kravica warehouse were a specific case, because Serb soldiers had hand grenades on them at this location.
“If a hand grenade can blow up a body to pieces, I guess that’s possible, but I can’t say that, a pathologist should say that,” Pavlovic said.
Pavlovic also claimed that thousands of individuals were killed in a column travelling to Tuzla through the woods, and that some of their remains could have been transferred to mass graves.
Mladic, the wartime commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, has been charged with the Srebrenica genocide, in which approximately 7000 Bosniaks from Srebrenica were killed in the days that followed the Bosnian Serb Army’s occupation of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995.
Mladic has also been charged with persecuting Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, to an extent that reached the scale of genocide in six municipalities, including Srebrenica. The charges against him also include terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
Pavlovic’s cross examination will continue on Tuesday.
