Kuvelja: Shooting and Cries from Warehouse

Zoran Eric, who was deployed as part of his military duty to the Agricultural Cooperative in Kravica, Bratunac municipality in July 1995, told the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina that at night on July 13, 1995 he heard “gunshots, bursts of bullets and people’s cries” in the warehouse in Kravica.

“In the morning I heard them inviting people, using megaphones, to come out of the warehouse, because water had been brought and an ambulance had arrived. After that I heard someone saying ‘Fire’, followed by bursts of bullets. It lasted for about half an hour or an hour,” Eric said.

The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina charges Bozidar Kuvelja, former member of the Second Squad with the First Company of the “Jahorina” Training Centre with the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Republika Srpska, MUP RS, with having participated in the shooting of more than 1,000 men inside and in front of the Kravica Agricultural Cooperative in July 1995.

According to the charges, on July 12, 1995, Kuvelja participated in a search of Bosniak villages in the Potocari area with the aim of gathering the population and taking them to “the collection center in Potocari” and the separation of men, who were then taken to “a white house”, where they were detained and mistreated.

Witness Eric said that one day after the shooting in the Kravica warehouse he was given an order, along with other Agricultural Cooperative workers and soldiers, to cover the bodies of the dead people with hay.

“I saw UN transporters which were stopped by the Army on the road leading to Kravica. We, the workers, were ordered to cover the corpses. There were between one and two hundred of them. I remember the ten corpses I covered. Later on a man named Dragan told me that those were civilians from Srebrenica,” Eric recalled.

The witness said that after he had been deployed to that location to perform his civil duties, two soldiers escorted him to Kravica. He said that, as he was entering a stable, he saw “ten civilians, Muslims, going towards Kravica with their hands up”.

“I saw trucks transporting corpses. Judging by the number of loads and trucks, I think that about a thousand corpses were transported from Kravica. (…) The loading of corpses lasted three days,” Eric said.

The trial is due to continue on June 28.

S.U.