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Nikolic, former member of the Territorial Defence, TO, blamed Muslims from Foca for the breakout of the conflict in April 1992. He said that his brother, who was the Commander of a TO unit, was killed in the first conflicts.
Nikolic said that all convicts, who had been sentenced under second instance verdict before the war, were released from the Penal and Correctional Facility in Foca “one day prior to the breakout of conflict”, which caused fear among the local population.
He said that he “does not know who gave the order” for that, but he suggested that it was done by Muslims.
According to the charges against wartime Commander of the Republika Srpska Army, Foca was one of the seven Bosnian municipalities, where the persecution of Muslims and Croats reached the scale of genocide.
When asked if he knew that Serbian TO leaders Gojko Jankovic and Miodrag Kunarac held Muslim women detained in a house, where they were subjected to multiple rape, Nikolic said:
“I heard after the war that Jankovic and Kunarac held and raped women. I did not hear hat from anybody during the war”.
Reminding him that both Jankovic and Kunarac were sentenced to long-term imprisonment for that, the Prosecutor quoted a part of the Tribunal’s verdict, containing a statement by a victim, who said that “Zoran Nikolic too raped her twice”.
The witness commented by saying that he did not know about that statement and that “at least two persons named Zoran Nikolic” lived in Foca.
When asked directly whether he was the Zoran Nikolic, who raped the Muslim woman, the witness answered negatively.
The indictment charges Mladic also with genocide in Srebrenica, terror against the local population in Sarajevo and taking UNPROFOR members hostage.
The trial is due to continue on Monday, July 21.
