Kravica: Marginal Number of Victims
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Demographer Svetlana Radovanovic, who was invited to testify as court expert by the Defence teams of the 11 persons charged with genocide, claims to have concluded, on the basis of the Prosecution’s documentation, that 25 persons died in Kravica village near Srebrenica on July 13, 1995.
“On the basis of the reports and death certificates of 675 identified persons whose remains were discovered in mass graves in wide area of Srebrenica, I concluded that 93 persons were killed in Kravica area in July 1995. Most of them, more precisely 60, died on July 12, while 25 persons were killed the following day, i.e. on July 13,” Radovanovic said.
Radovanovic’s findings were based on documents that the Prosecution has presented as material evidence.
The Prosecution of BiH charges 11 former members of the police forces and Republika Srpska Army with genocide in Kravica village. The indictment alleges that the indictees participated in the execution on July 13 of about 1,000 Srebrenica inhabitants detained in the warehouse of the Agricultural Cooperative.
Radovanovic said that she also used data from a report commissioned by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and compiled by Norwegian demographer Helge Brumborg, as well as the 1991 census data and data obtained from the Red Cross in order to determine “the total number of killed people on July 13, 1995”.
“Comparing all these documents, I noticed that the data on the dates of disappearance and dates of death are diametrically different, which means that there were some examples of people who were seen after their death. According to Brumborg’s data, Munib Muminovic was last seen on October 21, 1995, while his death certificate indicates that he was killed on July 17 that same year,” said Radovanovic.
During cross-examination, court expert Radovanovic said that the percentage of the killed people in the total population is “marginal” and it therefore “can not affect the vitality of the population”.
“I must say that the fact that 17,909 Srebrenica residents live outside the town at the moment, and this piece of information was obtained from the Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees in 2000, has more influence on the vitality of the population than the total number of the killed people,” Radovanovic claims.
The trial is due to continue on January 31, 2008.
