Killings in a Military Sense

An evacuation drill from the Hague International Tribunal building interrupts the trial of Ratko Mladic. The indictee comments on the drill by saying that US President Barack Obama “ordered the bombing of Syria”.

While the Prosecution’s military expert Richard Butler was testifying, warning sirens sounded in the courtroom. All staff were then asked to leave the building using emergency exits. Presiding judge Alphons Orie adjourned the hearing, but, prior to that, while the sound of the siren could still be heard, Mladic said: “Obama ordered bombing of Syria”.
 
Following the evacuation, which lasted about half an hour, the staff was allowed to go back to the Court building after being told that it was a drill.
 
Prior to the interruption, military expert Butler analysed numerous documents issued by the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, after the occupation of Srebrenica on July 11, 1995.
 
Mladic, former VRS Commander, is charged with genocide against about 7,000 Srebrenica Bosniaks. In addition to that, he is on trial for committing persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, which reached the scale of genocide in seven municipalities, terror against civilians in Sarajevo and taking UNPROFOR members hostage.  

Prosecutor Peter McCloskey presented Butler with a document issued by former police chief in Zvornik – Dragomir Vasic after his meeting with Mladic on July 13, 1995, which said that Mladic ordered police to participate in the “liquidation of 8,000 Muslim soldiers, whom we have blocked near Konjevic Polje” and that “combats continue”.
 
While saying that, at that time a line of between 12 and 15 thousand Bosniak men, one third of whom were armed, was trying to break through the ring around Srebrenica through the woods and reach Tuzla, Butler said that Mladic’s order meant that Serb forces “could continue killing people, in a military sense”, in their combat with the line of men.
 
According to Butler’s estimates, between 1,000 and 2,000 Bosniak men were killed in combat under different circumstances.
 
Prosecutor McCloskey dedicated the most part of Butler’s testimony to examining him about documents, which confirmed that the VRS captured a large number of Bosniaks from the mentioned line on July 13, 1995. One of the documents he quoted was an intercepted conversation during which an unidentified officer said that 6,000 soldiers had been captured. The military expert confirmed that an investigation in which he participated came to a similar conclusion.
 
Butler said that more than 2,000 captives were transferred to nearby Bratunac that same evening. According to Butler’s testimony, during the night on July 13/14, 1995 the first group of 1,000 captives was transferred to a school building in Pilica village, near Zvornik, where they were shot later on.

On July 14 the VRS transported thousands of other Muslims to various locations, where they ended up in the same way as the first group. “All of them were executed by July 17, 1995,” Butler said.
 
Butler said that lieutenant colonel Ljubisa Beara, the then Chief of Security Sector with the VRS Main Headquarters, was “the key, central person” in the organisation of the shooting. In 2010 the Hague Tribunal pronounced a first instance verdict against Beara, sentencing him to life imprisonment after having found him guilty of genocide in Srebrenica. Beara appealed the verdict.
 
The trial of Mladic is due to continue on Friday, September 6.