Karadzic: Suffocation of 24 prisoners

The witness, whose testimony implies that he worked in the camp and interrogated the prisoners, confirmed the count of the charge against Karadzic which specifies that on July 7, 1992, in the trucks which
transported imprisoned Bosniaks from Sanski Most to Manjaca, 24 prisoners suffocated to death.

KDZ-163 said that it happened due to “inhuman conditions” in which the prisoners were transported and the “unprofessional attitude” from the Serb police that escorted them, which “appalled” him.

“The prisoners were stacked like sardines, under the tarp, despite enormous heat,” he testified.

Karadzic, the former president of the Republic of Srpska, is charged with genocide in Srebrenica and another seven municipalities in Bosnia and Herzegovina, persecution of Bosniaks and Croats across the whole of Bosnia and Herzegovina, terror against civilians in Sarajevo with long-standing sniper fire and shelling, and the taking of members of international peace-keeping force as hostages, between 1992 and 1995.

On August 6, 1992, the day when, according to the witness, Serb police brought to Manjaca 1,460 mostly Bosniak prisoners from the Omarska camp, “a number of those were executed” in front of the camp.

KDZ-163 said that two Bosniak prisoners were murdered inside the camp itself, and that perpetrators were “immediately identified” and that the opening of an investigation was requested. The perpetrators, he said, went on trial in 2007.

The witness specified that among the imprisoned Bosniaks there were underage children, as well men older than 60.

At the start of the cross-examination, Karadzic, who is defending himself, asked the witness whether it is true that inside the Manjaca camp there were “only five deaths – two violent ones and three of natural causes.”

The witness said that was “true” but that he was “appalled” even by those two violent deaths nonetheless. “The investigation was immediately carried out at the scene, perpetrators were uncovered, and they were turned over to the judge and prosecutor. We did everything that any other service in the world would have done. That is what we could do at the time at Manjaca. It was too late, but the perpetrators were processed and convicted in 2007,” said KDZ-163.

Karadzic suggested there were no orders “from the top” to treat the prisoners inhumanely.

“I have not read a single act on deliberate infliction of pain to people or inhumane treatment,” said the witness.

Karadzic would resume cross-examining the witness on November 2.