Bosnian Serb Veterans’ Leader Denies Assisting Srebrenica Genocide

“This is a totally fictional indictment. I do not feel guilty. I plead not guilty,” he said.

Savcic is charged as the former commander of the 65th Motorised Regiment of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Main Headquarters with having planned, commanded and supervised his subordinates’ actions during the seizure of several hundred Bosniak men in the Nova Kasaba area, as well as their unlawful detention, abuse and murder.

According to the charges, between July 11 and 15, 1995, Savcic deliberately provided assistance to other participants in a joint criminal enterprise aimed at capturing, executing and burying Bosniak men from Srebrenica, and in that way destroying them as an ethnic group in that area.

Some 8,000 Bosniak men and boys from Srebrenica were killed by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995, a crime that has been classified as genocide by Bosnian and international courts.

Savcic’s indictment alleges that the other participants in the joint criminal enterprise included Bosnian Serb military chief Ratko Mladic, chief of security at the Bosnian Serb Army’s Main Headquarters, Ljubisa Beara, and the commanders of the army’s Drina Corps and Zvornik Brigade.

Mladic was convicted of genocide and other crimes by the Hague Tribunal in 2017 and sentenced to life imprisonment, but an appeal is now underway.

Beara died in prison in Berlin in 2017 while serving a life sentence that was handed down by the tribunal for genocide and other crimes.