Mladic Witness: 3,300 Serbs Killed in Sarajevo Siege

Former police official Simo Tusevljak, who researched war crimes against Serbs, told Mladic’s trial at the Hague Tribunal on Tuesday that 3,300 Serb civilians were killed in ten Sarajevo municipalities during the 1992-95 siege.

During cross-examination, Hague prosecutor Caroline Edgerton tried to prove that Tusevljak’s list contains victims of artillery and sniper attacks by Bosnian Serb forces.

Tusevljak said he could neither confirm nor deny her allegations. He said the list was only compiled to help Bosnian Serb police and was not intended to determine causes of death. That job was left to the Bosnian state prosecution, he said.

He was testifying at the trial of Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic who is charged with terrorising the residents of Sarajevo with a campaign of artillery and sniper attacks.

Mladic is also on trial for genocide in Srebrenica and other municipalities, persecution of non-Serbs across the country and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.

Prosecutor Edgerton listed the example of a woman called Vera Kovacevic, who she said died in the summer of 1992 from a mortar fired from Bosnian Serb positions.

“That is clear, but I did not have this document. But really, we didn’t say anything wrong [on the list]. This person did die on July 30, 1992,” answered Tusevljak.

According to military files, Edgerton said, another woman on the list called Nova Furtula died in June 1992 from a bomb thrown by a Bosnian Serb fighter.

She also said that Zelimir Knezevic, mentioned on Tusevljak’s list as “missing in Sarajevo”, was actually abducted by a Serb paramilitary called Veselin Vlahovic, according to witness testimonies.

“I see all this for the first time. I did not know,” said Tusevljak.

Vlahovic was jailed for 42 years, Bosnia’s longest-ever war crimes sentence, for a campaign of murder, rape and robbery against Bosniaks and Croats in Sarajevo in 1992.

Tusevljak repeated that the list only contains the names of Serbs killed in Sarajevo, without the causes of death.

“Many Serbs died on the front lines because they were used as human shields as they dug trenches. They died from Serb mortar attacks,” said Tusevljak.

He insisted that the examples given by the prosecutor did not invalidate his list of 3,300 Serb victims.

Mladic’s trial continues on Wednesday.