Witness Recalls Driving Potocari Men
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The witness said that he worked for the Bratunac company „Vihor“ when in July 1995 he was told by his boss to take a bus and drive Muslims from Potocari.
Mladjenovic said that on July 12 he drove a bus with women, children and elderly to Kladanj and on July 13 he drove 450 and 500 military able men from the „White House“ in Potocari to the school in Bratunac.
A military policemen, as the witness said, was inside the bus and in the school they were met by policemen. He said he did not see that anyone beat or abused the men and that he couldn’t see personal belongings of the men around the “White House”.
After he was shown video footage from Potocari, the Prosecution asked the witness whether he still claims he did not see “the bunch of personal belongings”.
“If there were so many belongings there, I don’t know how I could come to the White house”, said Mladjenovic.
Former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic is charged with genocide against 7.000 Srebrenica Muslims. He is also charged with forcibly removing tens of thousands of civilians who sought refuge at the UN base in Potocari.
Mladic is on trial for the persecution of non-Serb civilians, which reached the scale of genocide in some municipalities, terrorizing Sarajevo citizens and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
The Defence also questioned witness Trivko Pljevaljcic who said that he only heard about the abuse in the Foca prison after the war.
He said his brother worked as a guard in this jail from 1992 to 1994, but that he only realized crimes took place there once war crime related arrests happened.
Prosecutor Edward Jeremy said that one of the Hague tribunal verdicts mentions his brother as an accomplice in abuse of prisoners, but witness Pljevaljcic, said he never heard of that. “I never heard that a Muslim was killed in the jail”, said the witness.
The witness also said that the name of the city Foca was changed in the war to Srbinje, but only in order to rime with other towns, such as Trebinje, Nevesinje. He also allowed for the possibility that Srbinje might sound to some that it was something Serb.
The trial continues on Monday, October 27.
