Bosnian Prosecution Urges Conviction of Naser Oric

The prosecution told the state court in Sarajevo on Friday that the defence had not managed to refute evidence that Naser Oric and his Bosnian Army subordinate Sabahudin Muhic killed three Serb captives in 1992.

Oric and Muhic are accused of committing the crimes against the prisoners of war in the villages of Zalazje and Kunjerac in the Srebrenica municipality and in the village of Lolici in the of Bratunac municipality.

Prosecutor Miroslav Janjic argued that defence attempts to undermine the testimony of a protected witness codenamed O-1 had failed.

“The first defence thesis was that the prosecution based its indictment on witness O-1, which is not true… Its second thesis referred to the credibility of witness O-1. The defence tried to prove that this witness was not credible, but it did not succeed,” Janjic said.

Witness O-1 said that he saw Oric kill a captive in Zalazje and both defendants kill the other two captives.

Janjic also said that defence witnesses were not credible when they claimed that Oric did not participate in the Bosnian Army operation in the village of Kunjerac, because the defendant himself, while testifying before the Hague Tribunal, said he took part in that operation.

The retrial is being held after the state court’s appeals chamber quashed the original acquittal of Oric and Muhic in June this year. They deny the charges.

The original trial was highly controversial because Oric is seen as a hero by many Bosniaks for his role in defending Srebrenica in the years before the 1995 massacres, while some Serbs have claimed that the charges against him should have been more severe.

Before the original trial started, the defence asked the UN tribunal in The Hague to order a halt to the proceedings against Oric, arguing that he had already been tried for and acquitted of war crimes in Srebrenica by the Hague court and should not stand trial for the same crimes twice.

The Hague Tribunal rejected the request, with the judge saying that “the murder charges in the Bosnian indictment fundamentally differ from the murder charges in the Hague indictment with respect to the alleged victims and the nature, time and location of the alleged crime”.

The defence will present its closing statements on November 9.