Activists Accuse Serbian Politician of Bosnia War Crimes
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The Humanitarian Law Centre on Friday filed a criminal complaint against Andric, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army’s Birac Brigade, alleging that he illegally ordered the removal of more than 10,000 Bosniaks from the town of Zvornik on May 28, 1992.
The Bosniaks who were ousted were forced to take refuge in other villages, the Humanitarian Law Centre said.
“Several days later, on May 31, Andric issued an order to establish the Susica [prison] camp. The camp worked until September 30, 1992, and during that period the prisoners were subjected to inhumane conditions,” it alleged in a press release.
According to the HLC, prisoners slept on a concrete floor, were given one meal a day and kept in unhygienic conditions. Most of them were beaten daily, while women were raped and about 160 prisoners were killed.
The Centre also alleges that in May and June 1992, Andric’s brigade banished the Bosniak population from more than 20 villages in the Vlasenica municipality and torched another village in March 1993.
Andric was not immediately available for comment on the HLC’s criminal complaint.
But he denied committing the alleged crimes when he testified at the trial of Ratko Mladic in 2015.
He told the Hague Tribunal that in May 1992, he ordered the “removal of the civilian Muslim population” from territory under the control of the Birac Brigade, but insisted this was done “in an organised fashion”, and that the order only applied to those Bosniaks “who wanted to leave”.
“That order saved thousands, as many would not have survived,” said Andric, claiming that the Bosniaks needed to be sent away from the area to avoid violence by paramilitaries.
Andric is currently the deputy mayor of the New Belgrade municipality, which is headed by one of the candidates in Sunday’s elections for the mayor of Belgrade, Aleksandar Sapic.
He was also a member of the presidency of the Serbian People’s Party, part of the ruling coalition in Serbia.
The HLC said that in 2006, it sent a letter to Serbia’s then war crimes prosecutor Vladimir Vukcevic, asking him to investigate Andric over the alleged crimes at the Susica prison camp, and in Zvornik and Srebrenica, but it is not known whether the prosecution did so or not.
