New witness in Srebrenica Seven trial

New witness in Srebrenica Seven trial

Mihajlo Galić told the Hague court that he took over as the duty officer from one of the accused, Drago Nikolić, the then Zvornik Brigade security chief, at the forward command post (IKM) in Kitovnice, near Zvornik, in the evening of July 13, 1995.

At that time Mihajlo Galić was the assistant for personnel and recruitment in the Zvornik Brigade Staff. Dragan Obrenović, the Chief of Staff, was his immediate superior.

Obrenović was also indicted for the crimes in Srebrenica, but he pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 17 years in prison. His duty at the IKM was supposed to begin in the morning of July 14, 1995, Galić said, but a courier woke him up in the evening of July 13, 1995 with an order to go to Kitovnice and take over as the duty officer.

A driver took him to the IKM in an official vehicle. He arrived there at around 11 p.m.

Galić claims that he did not see Nikolić there. It was only the following morning that he wrote a note in the duty logbook that he “took over as the duty officer” from Nikolić.

The prosecution presented parts of the log book to the witness who recognized his handwriting confirming that he personally wrote down the entries quoted to him.

Nikolić’s defense argues that not only was Galić not the duty officer at the Kitovnice IKM in the evening of July 13, 1995, but that in fact he never was the duty officer there.

The argument is based on the differences between the statements given to the investigators in 2001 and in 2002 and on the statements given by the defense witnesses. The defense counsel indicated that he would confront the witness with those statements tomorrow.

The witness dismissed the allegations of Nikolić’s defense counsel arguing that he would not remember many of the things if “both the defense counsel and the investigators” had not showed him some documents to jog his memory.

The defense however insisted on its argument claiming that the documents were forgeries.

By cross-examining Mihajlo Galić in this manner, the defense was attmepting to contest the Statement of Facts signed by Dragan Obrenović, where he says that Drago Nikolić telephoned him in the evening of July 13 from the forward command post asking him to send a replacement as he had to go to Zvornik urgently to make preparations for the reception of “an enormous number of Muslim captives”.

Obrenović’s statement specified that Nikolić was given this task by the accused Vujadin Popović, the Drina Corps security chief.