Mladic: Mass Murders in Keraterm

Mladic, the former commander of the Army of Republika Srpska, is charged with genocide in Srebrenica and in seven other Bosnian municipalities, including Prijedor, as well as crimes against humanity as well as the violation of rules and customs of war.

Taci said that, after he returned from Croatia to the village of Kozarac near Prijedor in order to take his family away, he was arrested by the Serb forces in May 1992 who locked him up in Keraterm along with hundreds of other Bosniaks. Conditions in the camp were inhumane, while the prisoners were beaten up, added the witness.

Taci testified that in the night between May 24 and 25 he saw from the camp’s “room number two”, Serb soldiers setting up a machine gun on the table in the yard and point it to the nearby “room number three”, which housed around 150 male prisoners from the village of Hambarine near Prijedor.

“You could hear pleas for air from the room, they beat on the doors for them to be opened… They most probably broke down the door in order to get some air.”

“When they broke out, Serb soldiers opened fire at them and made a superficial effort to warn them: ‘Don’t run, we will shoot,” said the witness.

According to Taci, later he heard from a survivor from “room number three” that “Serbian army threw poison into the room and that people suffocated and opened the door by force in order to get some air,
while Serbs waited for them with a machine gun and executed them.”

The person who told the witness this passed out from the “poison” in the room and survived because of that.

Taci said that on the next morning the prisoners, himself included, on orders from the camp guards, had to load the bodies of the murdered and wounded on the trucks which had previously arrived.

After he was presented with the report from the First Krajina Corps of the Army of Republika Srpska, according to which “around 50” prisoners were killed “in an escape attempt”, Taci dismissed the claim as
“utterly false”.

Miodrag Stojanovic, Mladic’s lawyer, suggested in the cross-examination that the Keraterm camp was run by the police and not the army, but the witness claimed the opposite, saying that the guards wore camouflage uniforms.

The defence tried to link the incarceration of the Bosniaks with the attacks on Serb soldiers in the villages around Prijedor. Taci, however, replied he knew nothing about it.

At today’s session, Mladic complained through his lawyer that he did not feel well, but he attended the trial after a nurse took his blood pressure. At the beginning of the trial, Mladic refused to enter the courtroom, asking that his blood pressure be not measured by security guards, but medical staff. He entered the room only after the warning from the Trial Chamber that they would resume the trial without him.

Mladic’s lawyer Branko Lukic emphasised that Mladic did not give up his right to attend the trial and that he instructed his defenders not to take part in the process without him. Judge Alphons Orie warned the lawyers, however, that they have the duty to represent the interest of their client in the courtroom.

The trial will resume on Tuesday, September 4.