Mladic Officer Denies Removing Srebrenica Bodies

A former Bosnian Serb Army officertold Ratko Mladic’s trial in The Hague that he was not involved in an attemptedcover-up of the massacre of Bosniaks from Srebrenica in July 1995.

Vidoje Blagojevic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Bratunac brigade, told the UN-backed court on Tuesday that he knew nothing about the removal of the Srebrenica victims’ corpses from mass graves in autumn 1995 as part of a planned cover-up.

“I cannot testify about that, because I do not have the knowledge,” said Blagojevic, who was testifying in Mladic’s defence.

Prosecutor Margaret Hassan presented the witness with evidence that trucks containing “hundreds and hundreds of bodies” of the Srebrenica dead passed by his command and his apartment in the centre of Bratunac as the Bosnian Serb Army tried to “cover up evidence” about the mass killings.

Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, is on trial for alleged genocide against about 7,000 Bosniaks from Srebrenica after the fall of the UN-protected enclave on July 11, 1995. According to the indictment, his forces exhumed the bodies from ‘primary’ mass graves that autumn and transferred them to inaccessible ‘secondary’ mass graves in an attempt to cover up the crime.

Asked whether the Bratunac brigade’s former security officer informed him and other officers on October 16, 1995 that he was conducting a ‘clear-up’ operation Blagojevic replied: “To be honest, I do not remember.”

In 2007, the Hague Tribunal sentenced Blagojevic to 15 years in prison for aiding and abetting the killings and forced relocation of Bosniaks from Srebrenica. After he served two-thirds of his sentence in Norway, he was released in 2013.

Blagojevic also denied that he commanded army and police units which were searching for Bosniak men in the woods around Srebrenica in mid-July 1995.

“You say that because some prisoners who were later executed were seized in that operation and you know it,” the prosecutor said.

“No, that is incorrect,” the witness responded.

Mladic is also on trial for the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats across the country, which allegedly reached the scale of genocide in several municipalities, terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.

The trial continues.