Srebrenica Witness Changes Line on Executions
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The witness, Mile Milosevic, said that between March 1993 and the end of war in 1995 he was a member of the First Company of the Sixth Battalion, whose commander was Ostoja Stanisic, and his deputy, Marko Milosevic.
The witness said he was arrested on July 12, 1995, at the bus station and taken to the headquarters near Petkovci, and from there to the front line. He said he was arrested for seeing his daughter in Serbia without telling anyone.
When I came to the front line that day, I saw Stanisic with company commander Jovo Lazic visiting the line, and heard that people from Srebrenica were taken to Petkovci and would be transferred to Tuzla for exchange, said the witness.
Asked by the prosecutor, Predrag Tomic, why he told the State Protection and Investigation Agency, SIPA, that company commander Jovo Lazic had told him at the front line to be careful, and that people from Srebrenica would be executed a little further from Petkovci, the witness replied that he did not mean “executed” but “exchanged”.
The state prosecution charges Ostoja Stanisic and Marko Milosevic with crimes committed at the Petkovci dam near the village of Djulici in the Zvornik municipality, where in July 1995 around 1,000 captured Bosniak men from Srebrenica were executed.
According to the indictment, Stanisic was commander of the Sixth Battalion of the Zvornik Brigade of the Army od Republika Spska, while Milosevic was his deputy.
When asked by Slobodana Peric, lawyer of the first defendant, the witness said he did not hear from anyone that Stanisic ordered anything related to the people from Srebrenica.
When examined by Petko Pavlovic, lawyer of the second defendant, the witness said that he did not hear defendant Milosevic mentioning anything at the front line about the people from Srebrenica, nor did he say what would happen to them.
Asked by the prosecutor why he told SIPA that probably Stanisic ordered the people from Srebrenica to be killed, the witness replied it was possible he said that because at the time he did not know any other commanders beside the defendants.
The trial will resume on April 24.
