Mladic Witness Blames Arkan For Sanski Most Killings

Testifying at Ratko Mladic’s trial, defence witness Dusko Corokalo blamed Serbian soldiers who ‘lost control’ and Zeljko Raznatovic ‘Arkan’’s men for the crimes against Muslims and Croats in Sanski Most.

Corokalo, a former security officer with a local brigade of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, said that local Muslims caused conflicts in Sanski Most in May 1992, by refusing to hand over their weapons to the Serbs.

He also blamed an event in Hrustovo village in which a number of non-Serbs was killed, though he did not know how many, on “a number of people who got out of control”.

The witness said that paramilitary forces led by Zeljko Raznatovic “Arkan” were responsible for “all the evil” that befell about 1,000 Muslims and Croats from the village of Aganovici in the autumn of 1995, admitting that these people had “caused no troubles” to the Serbian authorities during the war.

Corokalo said Arkan’s men abused Serbs as well, and shaved their heads if they left the battlefield running away from Muslim-Croat offensives. They also shaved the head of the director of the hotel in Sanski Most in which they stayed, because their “pie was cold”, the witness said.

Mladic, former Commander of the VRS Main Headquarters, is charged with the persecution of Muslims and Croats throughout BiH, which reached the scale of genocide in six municipalities, including Sanski Most.

Mladic is also charged with genocide in Srebrenica, with terrorising the local population in Sarajevo and taking UNPROFOR members hostage.

During the cross-examination the prosecutors said that no significant quantity of weapons was found in Muslim and Croat homes in Sanski Most, quoting a document issued by Serbian police. Corokalo disagreed, asking “what a rather significant quantity means”.

Asked if he knew that, on May 31, 1992 Serbian forces killed 22 unarmed civilians in a garage in Hrustovo, the witness said he did not have that information, although he had examined arrested local residents in the village.

The Prosecutor then asked him if he had been informed that, on that same day, several Muslims and Croats were killed on a bridge in neighbouring Vrhpolje. Corokalo said that he heard about the killings “in the town in those days”.

Responding to a prosecutor’s suggestion that VRS members were the perpetrators, he said: “I do not know which units did that. I did not indulge in that.”

The witness confirmed that non-Serbs were detained at several locations in Sanski Most and that some were transferred later to a detention camp in Manjaca.

According to the charges, crimes against detainees were committed in a local sports hall, “Krinks” factory and “Betonjerka”.

Corokalo said that “there was no reasons” for the crimes committed against Muslim and Croat residents of Sanski Most by Raznatovic’s paramilitary forces.

However, he said that most non-Serb had left the town even before the arrival of Arkan’s men in 1995.

The trial is due to continue on November 19.