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A defence witness told Ratko Mladic’s war crimes trial that he didn’t see Serb fighters abusing Bosniak prisoners at the Susica detention camp in the Vlasenica area in 1992.
Defence witness Momir Deuric, who worked as a warehouseman at the Susica camp, told the former Bosnian Serb military chief’s trial at the Hague Tribunal on Monday that he had no knowledge of the crimes which are listed in the indictment.
When the prosecutor presented him with evidence about atrocities including beatings to death, the disappearance of captivities and sexual violence, Deuric responded: “I didn’t see or hear about that.”
According to the witness, Susica was a reception centre where local Muslims –prisoners of war, but also civilians – were held before they were freed in prisoner exchanges.
“Some of them came voluntarily… They were safer there than in their houses, they said,” Deuric testified, confirming that there were women, children and old people among the prisoners.
The witness stated that the prisoners were fed regularly, the same food as Serb guards and workers, and denied that they were “exhausted and skinny”, as international observers who visited the camp reported.
“There were, I don’t know, some of them who are naturally skinny, who were also skinny when they came,” the witness said.
He insisted that prisoners worked voluntarily and not under duress.
When the prosecutor suggested that the prisoners were mostly innocent civilians, Deuric responded: “I couldn’t know that… There were members of the army in civilian clothes – whether someone was a solder or civilian, I couldn’t know that.”
The head of security at Susica, Dragan Nikolic, was jailed for 20 years by the Hague Tribunal after he admitted that he was guilty of persecution, murders, torture and sexual abuse at the camp.
Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, is on trial for the persecution of Muslims and Croats throughout Bosnia and Herzegovina, which allegedly reached the scale of genocide in Vlasenica and six other municipalities in 1992.
He is also charged with genocide in Srebrenica in 1995, terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
The trial continues.
