Refusing Orders to Shoot Srebrenica Residents

Former Republika Srpska Army, VRS, officer Srecko Acimovic says at Ratko Mladic’s trial that he refused two orders to shoot Bosniak captives from Srebrenica, who were held in a school building in Rocevici village, Zvornik, in July 1995.

Acimovic, the then Commander of a battalion with the Zvornik Brigade of VRS, said that he received a written shooting order from the Brigade Command, but he assumed that it had originally come from the VRS’ Main Headquarters.
 
Witness Acimovic said that the head of the local community in Rocevici village, near Zvornik, informed him, on July 14, 1995, that Bosniaks were detained in the local school and that some of them were killed. As he said, when he came in front of the school, he saw unknown VRS soldiers and “a few bodies” and heard captives, who were held in the gym, begging for water and permission to use the toilet.
 
Acimovic then called the Brigade Command, but his call was not answered by his chieftains, but by Security Officer of the VRS Drina Corps Vujadin Popovic, who told him that the captives “would be exchanged” on the following day.
 
Acimovic said that, during that night he received a coded order, which was sent to the Battalion Command, telling him to “establish a squad”, which would participate in the shooting of captives from the school building. “We were ordered to establish a squad, which would be used to execution of captives… I refused to do it,” Acimovic said.
 
Mladic, former Commander of the Main Headquarters of VRS, is charged with genocide against about 7,000 Bosniaks in the days that followed the occupation of Srebrenica by Serbian forces on July 11, 1995. The indictment alleges that Mladic is charged with persecuting Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorising civilians in Sarajevo and taking UNPROFOR members hostage.
 
Acimovic said that the order was retransmitted later and that he refused it again. He specified that the order came from the Zvornik Brigade Command and that duty officer or Security Chief Drago Nikolic sent it.  
 
After that Nikolic invited him to come to the school building in Rocevic in the morning on July 15. Upon his arrival, Acimovic saw Popovic, who ordered him to check whether any soldiers were available to participate in the shooting. As he said, refusing the order once again, Acimovic proposed to Popovic to return the captives to the location from which they had been originally brought and went back to the Battalion Command.
 
“When they began transporting them, I was in the Command premises, but I heard that the captives were taken to a location near the ‘Standard’ military barracks in Kozluk, where they were executed,” Acimovic said.
 
In 2010 The Hague Tribunal sentenced Popovic, under a first instance verdict, to life imprisonment for genocide in Srebrenica, and Nikolic to 35 years in prison for having assisted in and supported the commission of genocide.
 
According to the charges against Mladic, about 500 Muslim men, who had been previously held in a school building in Rocevic, were shot in Kozluk.

The trial of Mladic is due to continue on Tuesday, June 25.