They Did not Fight, but They Were Killed

Haglund, who led exhumations from several graves in 1996, stuck to his statement that most of bodies, which were found in the graves, were killed at those locations and that there were no indications that those people had participated in combats.

When Defence attorney Branko Lukic insisted that the graves also contained bodies of those killed in battles, Haglund said: “It is possible, but I do not know about it”.

In his expert report Haglund presented results of exhumations from mass graves in Cerska, Orahovac and on Branjevo military farm, specifying how many bodies, blindfolds and wire ligatures for hands were found in them.

Former Commander of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, Mladic is charged with genocide against about 7,000 Muslim men from Srebrenica, who were shot in the days that followed the occupation of the Eastern Bosnia enclave, which was under the United Nations, UN protection at the time, by VRS on July 11, 1995.

According to the charges and previously pronounced verdicts, Serb forces killed about 1,200 Muslims on Branjevo farm on July 16, 1995 and about 1,000 in Orahovac on July 14. 150 captives from Srebrenica were shot alongside the road in Cerska after having been brought to the location by five buses. The indictment alleges that VRS transferred bodies of numerous victims from primary graves to many secondary graves in the autumn of 1995 in an attempt to conceal the crime.

Mladic’s Defence attorney Lukic presented the witness with the fact that, according to lists made by the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, ABiH, two of the persons exhumed from Cerska and Branjevo farm got killed in 1994.

The Prosecution expert responded by saying that he did not deal with identification of victims, but, according to his findings, all the victims were “killed at the same time”. The witness said that, in case one of the victims was identified in autopsy reports, it meant that a personal document was found next to the body in the grave.

Speaking about the grave in Cerska from which 150 bodies, out of which 149 were killed by bullets, were exhumed, Haglund said that “those men did not fight, they were killed at that place”.

When asked whether he “exhumed any men killed in battles”, Haglund said he did not, “unless those persons participated in battles before being added to the graves, where the killed people were buried.”  

Defence attorney Lukic asked the witness if he knew where ABiH members, who were killed while trying to break through to Tuzla through the woods, were buried, adding that, according to the Army’s documents, there were about 3,000 of them. Haglund answered negatively.

Responding to Lukic’s suggestion that, during the exhumations he could not have differentiate between “civilians and soldiers” in the graves, the Prosecution expert said that “those were the men brought from Srebrenica.”

Mladic is also charged with persecuting Muslims and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorising civilians in Sarajevo by long-lasting shelling and sniping and taking members of UN peace forces hostage.

The trial is due to continue on July 25.