Voluntary Departure, not Enforced Resettlement

“The Prosecution has not presented any single counter-orders for the Serbian side. I issued an order to stop the operations in the Srebrenica surroundings. There was pressure during the war, but I did not waiver under pressure if it implied big losses on our side,” Karadzic said, addressing the Trial Chamber.According to him, the Prosecution’s behaviour was not to the benefit of justice.“What would the Prosecution give for having found just one order, which I issued for the sake of the public, and a different order implemented in practice,” Karadzic asked, pointing out that the Prosecution neglected such “Muslim orders”.According to Karadzic, the enforced resettlement of Bosnian Muslims and Croats was not conducted, but they left voluntarily.“People did leave, but it was hard for them. They departed voluntarily from the areas controlled by Serbs,” Karadzic said.In regard to the accusations for the cleansing of Croats from Posavina, Karadzic said that this referred to the cleansing of military formations from Posavina, where there was a corridor, which was very important at that time.“We had Croats in our units,” Karadzic said.Karadzic, former President of Republika Srpska and President of the Serbian Democratic Party, is charged with genocide in Srebrenica and seven other Bosnian municipalities, terror against citizens in Sarajevo and taking UNPROFOR members hostage.Speaking about the beginning of the war in Prijedor, Karadzic said that it happened, because “the headquarters in Sarajevo was mad, because they negotiated with the Serb aggressor.””We captured 2,000 members of Green Berets and handed them over to investigative bodies. The authorities in Pale had no information about it. A detention unit for them was in Omarska. It was not done without an investigation. Sixty percent of them were released, while 40 percent were transferred to Manjaca,” Karadzic said, pointing out, on the basis of a journalist’s report that Muslims went to the reception camp in Trnopolje on their own will.The indictee said that Prijedor was not on the frontline and that there was no declared army, just “terrorists in dug outs”. Nevertheless, as he said, those terrorists were treated as prisoners of war.Karadzic said that crimes did happen, but that “the first next level” fought against crimes committed by their subordinates. Karadzic is due to present his closing statement for ten working hours.