‘We Believed Mladic When He Said We’d Be Safe’

“You will no longer kill Serb children in Serbian Podrinje. We shall kill you all,” former Bosnian Serb Army commander Ratko Mladic is alleged to have told a group of wounded Bosniak men in Srebrenica on July 13, 1995.

Sadik Selimovic, the man who recalled what he alleged were Mladic’s words that day, was one of them.

Selimovic managed to survive when so many others did not, but he thinks that the words spoken by Mladic, who is awaiting his first-instance verdict at the Hague Tribunal on November 22, have come true.

“He has killed all of us,” said Selimovic.

Haska Velic also met Mladic during those days, at the United Nations peacekeepers’ compound in Potocari near Srebrenica, along with many other Bosniaks who fled the town seeking safety after it was seized by Bosnian Serb forces on July 11, 1995.

Mladic arrived and promised that no harm would come to anybody.

“Our people gathered around him. The place was so crowded, you could not get any closer to him. We thought nobody would harm these people because they were not guilty of anything,” Velic recalled.

“Mladic was saying: ‘You will not miss even a hair from your head.’ I believed that. I could not know that people could lie so much.”

In the days that followed, some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys were massacred by Bosnian Serb forces in the worst atrocity since World War II – a crime classified as genocide by international and Bosnian courts.

While waiting in Srebrenica on July 13, together with around 20 other wounded people in order to be allowed to go to territory controlled by the Bosnian Army to get undergo medical treatment, Selimovic heard the noise of trucks, buses and shouting: “Let’s go hunting for Turks!”

All of a sudden, there was silence.

“An ambulance door opened and I saw Mladic. He asked where we were from. I said I was from Bratunac and he asked what I was doing in Srebrenica. I said I had fled from the killing in Bratunac,” Selimovic recalled.

“He asked: ‘Where is [the Bosniak Territorial Defence chief in Srebrenica] Naser Oric? Why has he fled? Why hasn’t he waited for me? Such a great warrior, but he still flees. Never mind, we shall find him.’”

Oric, a well-known Bosniak commander, was in Tuzla. He had participated in the defence of Srebrenica until May 29, 1995, when he was relieved of his command.

Oric was later acquitted by the Hague Tribunal in 2008 of committing war crimes in Srebrenica, and was also acquitted last month by the Bosnian state court of killing three Serb prisoners of war.

Selimovic said that when he spotted Mladic, he felt a combination of fear and pain caused by his wound.

“I did not believe I would survive,” he said.

Haska Velic’s son Abdulkadir was a medical worker in Srebrenica during the war. He helped the wounded before and after the fall of the town to Serb forces, as he did not want to leave them behind.

His mother saw him for the last time at the UN compound in Potocari.

Many years later, she found out he had been killed in Tisce along with tens of other captives who Bosnian Serb soldiers held in detention in a school building prior to executing them.

A total of 38 former members of the Bosnian Serb Army and police force have been sentenced to more than 600 years in prison, plus three life sentences, for committing genocide and other crimes in Srebrenica.

Several officers from the Bosnian Serb Army’s Main Headquarters, which was commanded by Mladic, have also been convicted.

Ljubisa Beara, the chief of security, was sentenced to life imprisonment, as was Zdravko Tolimir, the assistant for intelligence and security affairs; Radivoje Miletic, the chief of operational and educational affairs, got 18 years, and Milan Gvero, the assistant for morale and religious affairs, was sentenced to five years.

Mladic’s defence lawyer has insisted that the evidence proves that the former Bosnian Serb military chief had no knowledge about crimes against humanity and killings of non-Serbs in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

“We cannot deny the crimes, but we ask for and expect the truth – this is key,” lawyer Miodrag Stojanovic told BIRN.

But in Hague Tribunal verdicts related to the Srebrenica massacres, Mladic was labelled the central figure.

“On the basis of evidence it is clear that such a massive operation could not have been undertaken without an approval and order by commander Mladic. Bearing in mind his role, as well as his actions and statements from that period, including his direct participation in the key stages of that operation, any other conclusion is unthinkable,” said the verdict in Beara’s trial.

“The stamp he left through his threats, speeches and orders can be followed through all the key moments of this killing enterprise,” it added. “The trial chamber has ascertained that Mladic was the central driving force of the killing plan.”

The UN court will offer its first judgment on the charges against Mladic on Wednesday; the verdict can be appealed.