Belgrade: Ex-RS policemen on trial for Srebrenica war crime

Belgrade: Ex-RS policemen on trial for Srebrenica war crime

Deputy Prosecutor Mioljub Vitorovic today presented the details of the indictment, which accuses the defendants, including the first-accused, Nedeljko Milidragovic, of the murder of 1,313 Bosnian Muslim (Bosniak) men, on July 14, 1995 in the village of Kravice, in the Bratunac municipality, eastern Bosnia.

According to the indictment, Milidragovic, at the time the commander of a squad of the Special Brigade's Jahorina Training Center, and his men violated the rules of international law inside, in front, and in the immediate vicinity of an agricultural collective's hangar in Kravice, to commit mass liquidations of several hundred civilians - men, Bosnian Muslims.

The indictment says that other members of the RS (Serb Republic) MUP, including unidentified members of the squad, started the liquidations of several hundred people imprisoned inside the hangar on July 13, 1995, by shooting at them using automatic weapons and by throwing hand grenades inside the structure.

The prosecution said the accused in this way killed an undetermined number of people, and then in the early hours of July 14 deployed around the structure where a large number of civilians were imprisoned. Milidragovic ordered and personally took part in the killings of several hundred civilians who had survived the initial massacre, including some wounded men, the indictment states.

According to this, Milidragovic and another defendant, Aleksa Golijanin, invited the victims to exit the hangar, promising that "nothing bad would happen to them," and later formed a firing squad and executed that group of prisoners. Those who survived were killed from point blank range, the prosecution charges, adding that during the same day, until the evening hours, in front and around the hangar in Kravice, "Milidragovic issued orders and personally took part in the mass killings."

Deputy Prosecutor Vitorovic this morning read out the names of all 1,313 victims identified so far, whose remains have been exhumed from various locations in Bosnia-Herzegovina: Glogova, Ravnice, Hangar Kravica, Zeleni Jadar, Zalazje, Pusmulići, Bljeceva, and Budak.

Beside Milidragovic and Golijanin, the indictment names Milivoje Batinica, Aleksandar Dacevic, Boro Miletic, Jovan Petrovic, Dragomir Parovic, and Vidosav Vasic as the perpetrators.

During a preparation hearing held behind closed doors in October all eight defendants denied the charges agiast them, and will present their detailed defense as the trial continues.

All the accused, arrested in Serbia last March, have in the meantime been released pending the outcome of the trial.