Defence Urges Acquittal for Bosniak Commander Naser Oric

Addressing the court, Oric argued that the testimony of the prosecution’s key protected witness, codenamed O-1, was false.

“I maintain I am not guilty. The entire proceedings are based on the testimony of false witness O-1,” Oric said.

Oric and his Bosnian Army subordinate Sabahudin Muhic are accused of killing three Serb 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 in 1992.

Defence lawyer Lejla Covic said that the prosecution had again failed to prove its case at the retrial, which was held after Oric and Muhic were acquitted at their first-instance trial.

“We think that during the first and second instance trials, [the prosecution] proved nothing but the existence of an armed conflict. The defence does not refute any of the prosecution’s evidence except for the testimony given by witness O-1,” Covic said.

Covic said that O-1 gave conflicting statements, which were contrary to other pieces of evidence related to the murders of the three Serb captives, Slobodan Ilic, Milutin Milosevic and Mitar Savic.

“Each time [O-1] was examined, he changed his statements in substantial parts,” Covic said.

The prosecution charged Oric with all three murders, while Muhic was charged with participating in the murders of Milosevic and Savic.

Covic said that O-1 had been convicted 11 times of various crimes, including theft and false reporting.

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

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”.

Muhic’s defence is due to present its closing statement on November 16.