Separating Serbs from Other Peoples

Testifying at Ratko Mladic’s trial, a Hague Prosecution military expert says that, in May 1992 the indictee was aware of the fact that the separation of Serbs from Bosniaks and Croats, as a Serbs’ military goal, would represent “genocide”, so he warned political leaders about it.

Brown said that, during a Republika Srpska Parliament session held on May 12, 1992, at which Mladic was appointed Commander of the newly-formed Republika Srpska Army, VRS, he warned the participants that separation of Serbs from Bosniaks and Croats, as one of the strategic goals posed to the Army by the Republika Srpska leadership, would represent “genocide”.

According to the session minutes, which Brown read, Mladic said: “Therefore, we can neither clean nor use a riddle so only Serbs would stay or fall through it, while the others would leave…Well, that is, I do not know how Mr. Karadzic will explain this to the world. People, that is genocide”.

According to Brown, Mladic’s warning did not only refer to future events but also ongoing and completed operations by Serb forces in Bosanska Krajina.

The indictment charges Mladic, former Commander of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, with the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, which reached the scale of genocide in seven municipalities. Besides that, he is on trial for genocide in Srebrenica, terror against citizens of Sarajevo and taking UNPROFOR members hostage. Radovan Karadzic is on trial at The Hague for those same crimes.

According to Brown’s testimony, documents issued by the First Krajina Corps of VRS, which he studied, reflected a pattern of operations, consisting of “disarming Muslim paramilitary forces” through attacks on villages, during which the non-Serb population was moved, while a number of local residents were taken prisoner.

The Prosecution’s military expert said that the movement of Bosniak civilians, as well as detention of many persons in detention camps in the vicinity of Prijedor, was a part of achieving the goal to separate Serbs from the two other peoples in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

As he said, in archives of the Court Martial in Banja Luka, Brown did not find evidence indicating that anybody was tried for having committed abuse and murders in Omarska, Keraterm and Trnopolje detention camp or Manjaca military detention camp, although the VRS Main Headquarters was informed about those accusations.

Brown said that the International Red Cross requested the dismissal of the detention camp at Manjaca, adding that the VRS was responsible for other detention camps as well, although they were formally under the control of civil authorities.

Following the dismissal of Manjaca detention camp in the autumn of 1992, Bosniak and Croat detainees were not released home, but “transported to Croatia by buses”.

Mladic’s Defence is due to continue cross-examining military expert Brown on Thursday, November 21.