Karisik Denies Knowledge of Srebrenica Killings

Prosecutors at the Ratko Mladic trial tried to prove before the Hague tribunal that Milenko Karisik, a witness for the defense, knew about the capture and killings of thousands of Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica in the summer of 1995. In his previous testimony, Karisik had said he wasn’t aware of the Srebrenica killings.

Ratko Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, is charged with orchestrating and executing the Srebrenica genocide, in which more than 7000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed in July 1995.  

Karisik is the former deputy minister of internal affairs and the chief of the public safety unit within the Bosnian Serb ministry.
 
Prosecutor Melissa Pak presented Karisik with military and police documents from July 1995, which describe the capture of Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica. According to Pak, some of the documents were sent directly to Karisik.
 
Despite this, Karisik maintained that he didn’t read most of the documents, repeating that they weren’t in his jurisdiction, as at the time he was in charge of the Sarajevo battlefield at the Pale police headquarters during a Bosnian Army offensive.
 
“I had no authority to act on these documents, others had that authority,”  Karisik said.

Karisik gave the same answer when faced with a report written by Ljubisa Borovcanin, former commander of the special police brigade, to the headquarters in Pale. The report stated that 200 Bosnian Muslims were killed and 500 more were captured around Srebrenica on July 13, 1995.
 
Borovcanin was found guilty of crimes in Srebrenica by the Hague tribunal and sentenced to 17 years in prison.

Pak reminded Karisik that policemen from his unit escorted thousands of men from Srebrenica to locations near Zvornik on July 14, 1995, where they were killed by Bosnian Serb Army soldiers a few days later.
 
“I didn’t know this at the time…The unit was under the command of the army and outside of my jurisdiction,” Karisik replied.
 
Prosecutor Pak brought up a meeting Karisik had with the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Amy’s Zvornik Brigade, Vinko Pandurevic, on July 16, 1995. She said the killings in Srebrenica must have been discussed during that meeting.
 
“No. It was not discussed and I was not informed,” Karisik said.
 
Pandurevic was sentenced to 13 years in prison for crimes in Srebrenica by the Hague tribunal.
 
During cross examination, Karisik confirmed, however, that he ordered perpetrators of crimes in Srebrenica from the Tenth Reconnaissance Unit of the Bosnian Serb Army to be given new fake documents. He claimed this was ordered by the Police Minister on the request of military intelligence officials.
 
Karisik said, however, that he “did not know who the members were or what they had done.”

Prosecutor Pak suggested that he aided in hiding perpetrators.

“No. I only followed legal procedures…That is the normal procedure for military intelligence…We didn’t know who they were and we didn’t care.”
 
Mladic is also on trial for persecuting Bosnian Muslims and Croats across Bosnia and Herzegovina, on a level that reached the scale of genocide in some municipalities, as well as terrorizing Sarajevo’s citizens and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
 
Mladic’s trial resumes on Wednesday.