KRSTIC: GENOCIDE CONVICT TRANSFERED FROM BRITISH PRISON TO HAGUE

PHOTO: Gen. Radislav Krstic with the
Serb leader Radovan Karadzic in 1992.

We learn from sources close to the Hague Tribunal that General Radislav Krstic -- convicted for his involvement in the 1995 Srebrenica Genocide -- has been transferred from the British prison to the ICTY detention unit in Scheveningen, Netherlands.

He was complaining that food, accommodation and security at the British prison were bad. In May of 2010, he was attacked and, allegedly, his throat was slashed (some sources reported it was only a minor cut). The Hague Tribunal will try to find another prison for him.

General Radislav Krstic is a monster. Instead of being hanged like Nazi war criminals, the Hague Tribunal is doing everything they can to accommodate the needs and comfort of this monster.

In July 1995, the Army of Republic of Bosnia-Herzegovina's intelligence units intercepted Krstic ordering the killings of Srebrenica men and boys. In the intercept, Krstic stated that "Single one must not be left alive!". Krstic's instructions to his troops echoed the order that Radovan Karadzic gave to Miroslav Deronjic, "Miroslav, they must all be killed... All and every one you find there."

Here is the excerpt from the Krstic intercept:

General Krstic: Are you working down there? [executing men and boys]

Major Obrenovic: Of course we're working.

General Krstic: Good.

Major Obrenovic: We've managed to catch a few more, either by gunpoint or in mines.

General Krstic: Kill them all, God damn it!

Major Obrenovic: Everything is going according to a plan.

General Krstic: Single one must not be left alive.

Major Obrenovic: Everything is going according to a plan. Everything.

General Krstic: Way to go, chief. The Turks are probably listening to us. Let them listen, the mother-f-----s. (Turks is a derrogative name for Bosnian Muslims)

SREBRENICA GENOCIDE IS NOT A MATTER OF ANYBODY'S OPINION; IT'S A JUDICIAL FACT RECOGNIZED FIRST BY THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA AND SUBSEQUENTLY BY THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE.

MLADIC PRESENT DURING THE ORAHOVAC MASSACRE

In his evidence at the trial of Radovan Karadzic, a witness testifying under the pseudonym KDZ 039 described the three days he spent in detention in Potocari and Bratunac and an execution in Orahovac on 14 July 1995. The indictment against Radovan Karadzic alleges that about 1,000 Bosniaks captured after the fall of Srebrenica were killed in the incident. When the sun set, the execution continued under the headlights of backhoes, the witness recounted.



SENSE TRIBUNAL — With the evidence of a witness testifying under the pseudonym KDZ 039, the prosecution case entered its final stage at the trial of Radovan Karadzic. The prosecution will now try to prove that the former Republika Srpska president is responsible for the genocide in Srebrenica. The witness, a survivor of an execution in Orahovac in the summer of 1995, has already testified at all Srebrenica trials before the Tribunal.

The summary of the evidence the witness gave in November 2007 at the trial of the Bosnian Serb military and police officers was admitted into evidence today. According to the summary, after the fall of Srebrenica on 11 July 1995 the witness headed towards Potocari with the female members of his family. The next day the witness was separated from his family. He was detained with a large group of elderly men in an unfinished house in Potocari. There, the witness saw General Ratko Mladic for the first time. He was bareheaded and wearing a camouflage uniform. He greeted the prisoners saying ‘hello, neighbors’. Mladic told the prisoners they would be exchanged for the captured Serbs.

That same night, the witness and the remaining prisoners were taken to Bratunac by bus where they were detained in an abandoned warehouse near the Vuk Karadzic school. About 400 persons were brought there by midnight. During the night, Serb soldiers took out about 40 prisoners. Once they were taken out, the men inside could hear the blows, wails and screams, the witness said. Some prisoners returned to the warehouse badly beaten and bloody; others didn’t return.

The next day, on 13 July 1995, the prisoners were given water and they were allowed to remove from the warehouse the five men who had died during the night as a consequence of the beatings. As the witness recounted, behind the warehouse they saw a pile of dead bodies. More prisoners were taken out and about 40 prisoners were killed by the end of the day. A prisoner was beaten with an iron bar in front of the witness and was then finished off with an axe blow to his back.

The surviving prisoners were taken to Orahovac in six buses in the night of 13 July 1995. The witness saw Mladic again. Mladic told the bus driver to follow a ‘red car’. In Orahovac, the prisoners were detained in the primary school gym. By 10 am the following day, there were about 2,500 men in the gym, the witness estimated.

General Mladic visited the prisoners there too, this time brining new promises. Instead of taking them ‘to Fikret [Abdic’s territory]’ as they were promised, the prisoners were made to board the buses. They were blindfolded and were taken to a nearby execution site in groups. There, they were shot to death. At one point, the witness took off his blindfold and saw many dead bodies around him. When a burst was fired in his direction, the witness fell and remained on the ground, buried under dead bodies. The witness saw Serb soldiers bringing in new groups of people in trucks. The newcomers were taken out and executed. General Mladic stood there and watched it all, the witness claims.

When the night fell, the execution continued. The area was lit by the headlights of two backhoes. When it was done, the witness and two other survivors ran away from the execution site. On 19 July 1995, the witness crossed into the BH Army-controlled territory.

At the beginning of the cross-examination, Karadzic wanted to hear from the witness how Mladic was dressed and how big the warehouse in Bratunac was. Karadzic also asked him how and why the prisoners were taken out of the warehouse in the night of 12 July when about 40 persons were killed. Karadzic’s case is that the prisoners were taken out mainly because individuals wanted to take their revenge on them for crimes against Serbs in the villages around Srebrenica.

Karadzic will continue his cross-examination of the witness on Monday, 28 November 2011.

SREBRENICA GENOCIDE IS NOT A MATTER OF ANYBODY'S OPINION; IT'S A JUDICIAL FACT RECOGNIZED FIRST BY THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA AND SUBSEQUENTLY BY THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE.

AUSTRALIA REMEMBERS SREBRENICA, HON. MP TONY SMITH

Honorable MP, Tony Smith

Commonwealth of Australia
Parliamentary Debates
21 November 2011
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
PROOF MOTIONS
Srebrenica Remembrance
Speech by MP Tony Smith

[Note by the Bosnian Genocide Blog team: We thank MP Tony Smith for his Srebrenica advocacy in the Parliament of Australia. A minor correction: Forensic evidence compiled by the International Commission on Missing Persons indicates 8,100 killed in Srebrenica, not 7,000 (7,500 quoted by the ICTY represents minimum number of victims, not the total.). Overall, Mr. Smith's speech was excellent. Thank you.]

Speaker Mr TONY SMITH

Mr TONY SMITH (Casey) (20:1 0): I appreciate the opportunity to speak on this motion moved by the member for Melbourne Ports to commemorate the terrible massacre of Srebrenica. The 18th century Anglo-Irish conservative philosopher Edmund Burke famously wrote: ‘The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.’ And evil was indeed ascendant on those sunny July days 16 years ago when 7,000 unarmed prisoners were slaughtered at Srebrenica during the Bosnian War of the 1990s.

The direct perpetrators of this war crime were military units of the Republika Srpska, the breakaway Bosnian Serb state within the former nation of Yugoslavia. In fact, the commander of those units, General Ratko Mladic, and the former president of the Republika Srpska, Radovan Karadzic, are currently on trial in the Hague for this and other abominations. 

But, beyond the writing of yet another chapter in the long bloody saga of man’s inhumanity to man, the Srebrenica massacre demonstrates two great verities: one ageless and the other current to our present age. The eternal truth arises from the fact that, in international affairs, as in physics, a power vacuum will always be filled. The only question is by whom: the benign or the malign? It is an ugly world—a world where wickedness regards weakness with contempt; a world where foulness will exploit feebleness to do a devil’s dance on the graves of the innocent.

If the crime of Srebrenica teaches us anything it is that, if the benign lack the will to exert power that is constructive, the malign will surely step into the breach to deploy power that is destructive. We learn that, without strength, the forces of decency will be swamped by indecency. And it was indecency incarnate that broke with all its fury over the 7,000 innocent men and boys who were shot down without mercy.

The atrocity that took place at Srebrenica in July 1995 was horrible enough in its own right, but the horror was made more acute and more profound by the fact that those killings took place almost literally under the noses of an international force posted to keep the peace where there was no peace to be found. A battalion of Dutch peacekeepers, understrength and underarmed, was unable to halt the mass murderers as they went about their grisly business.

There is little question as to how these war criminals committed this horrendous massacre. The record in that regard has been copiously documented, including by the member for Melbourne Ports. Witnesses have been deposed and forensic evidence has been gathered. Nor is there really any doubt about the why of the Srebrenica slaughter: it was just another dark page in the same bloody saga of bigotry induced bloodbath that has marred the annals of human history.

The real question isn’t why the Serbians murdered unarmed Muslim prisoners; it is why the army of an advanced Western nation was unable to stop it. To understand that we must transport ourselves back a decade and a half in time. This was the era of Francis Fukuyama’s so-called ‘end of history’. The Berlin Wall had fallen six years previously. The Cold War was won and the triumph of the West was supposedly assured. It was a time for optimism. It is true that the social democracies of continental Europe felt there was no longer anything to fear and thus no need to keep up military spending, and the Netherlands were no exception to this trend. The so-called peace dividend was used in the early 1990s to reduce the budget of the Dutch armed forces. In the euphoria of Cold War victory, the Netherlands and other European nations allowed themselves to forget a cardinal Latin adage that has rung true since the legions of Julius Caesar marched into Gaul: ‘If you desire peace, prepare for war.’ As we enter a new period of global instability and international power rivalry, this eternal lesson, retaught so cruelly by the slaughter at Srebrenica, is one we in this place should well and truly heed.

Complementing these ageless truths is another verity that is a product of our current age. It demonstrates, as we have heard, how the United Nations was unable to act decisively in the face of genocide. You see, the Dutch troops whom I previously mentioned were wearing blue helmets during their posting to Srebrenica. They were in the Balkans as part of a UN peacekeeping operation and, as such, they answered to a chain of command that extended all the way to the UN secretariat in New York. So, when out-gunned and out-numbered, the Dutch seeing the killings unfolding before them, tried to call for close air support. These Netherlands troops begged and pleaded for air strikes to target the Serb positions and bring the slaughter to a halt. But air strikes were postponed for hours as the Serbian mass murder operation progressed. When the aircraft finally arrived, it was too little too late. A grand total of two bombs were dropped with a zero deterrent effect. The Dutch battalion were then withdrawn, leaving the local Bosnian Muslim population to the none-too-tender mercies of the advancing Serb forces.

Even more outrageous was the fact that the Srebrenica massacre took place just a year after one of the worst acts of genocide to occur since the Holocaust —and the member for Melbourne Ports referred to this. Between April and July 1994, roughly 800,000 people in Rwanda were hacked, burned and stabbed to death, while another UN force was left hapless and hopeless. And as in Srebrenica, the UN commander in Rwanda, Canadian General Romeo Dallaire, begged for reinforcements and support from UN headquarters in faraway Manhattan. And, as in Srebrenica, he received nothing of the kind. You would think the bloody lessons of Rwanda might have been absorbed by the high mandarins at UN secretariat. But, tragically, the past of Rwanda turned out to be the prologue for Srebrenica

The United Nations bureaucracy, unfortunately, was channelling spirit of Tallyrand’s famous quip about the post-Waterloo Bourbon monarchy: ‘They forgot nothing and they learned nothing.’ From early 1992 to mid-1995 the UN tried and failed to bring an end to the Balkans war, a war which killed hundreds of thousands of people in a conflict that knew no rules, a conflict where the laws of war were honoured more in the breech than the observance.

The failure of the UN in Rwanda and the Srebrenica is not contested. As the member for Melbourne Ports outlined, in fact, it is accepted by the United Nations itself. Indeed, on the 10th anniversary—the member for Melbourne Ports mentioned the fifth—of the Srebrenica massacre, then Secretary General Kofi Anan issued a statement, where he said:

… we made serious errors of judgement, rooted in a philosophy of impartiality and non-violence which, however admirable, was unsuited to the conflict in Bosnia. That is why … the tragedy of Srebrenica will haunt our history forever.

But such mea culpas do not account for much if they are unaccompanied by real reform.

An end to the Balkan slaughter of the 1990s was not brought about by international diplomacy or UN facilitation. The war was finally ended by brute military force. Brute military force brought to bear by a US-led campaign of air attacks under the auspices not of the UN but of NATO. Starting in late August 1995, US and NATO aircraft flew over 3,500 combat sorties against over 330 Serbian targets. The Serbs were bombed into submission, pure and simple. If the UN did not learn from the Rwandan genocide, US President Clinton certainly did. In a speech on the Balkans crisis delivered in November 1995, Clinton said:

We cannot stop all war for all time but we can stop some wars. We cannot save all women and all children but we can save many of them. We can’t do everything but we must do what we can.

America’s 42nd President learned that, at times, the only way to stop the triumph of evil is for good men to vanquish it through the moral and focused application of armed force. That is the real lesson of Edmund Burke applied to Srebrenica—a lesson we should all seriously ponder.

SREBRENICA GENOCIDE IS NOT A MATTER OF ANYBODY'S OPINION; IT'S A JUDICIAL FACT RECOGNIZED FIRST BY THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA AND SUBSEQUENTLY BY THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE.

STRIJELJANJE: POREDALI SMO IH, PA PUCALI U LEĐA

Sud Bosne i Hercegovine

Franc Kos o strijeljanju Srebreničana: Ljudi su mirno stajali, a mi smo pucali u leđa

FENA — Svjedočeći u svoju korist na suđenju za genocid u Srebrenici, optuženi Franc Kos je kazao da su zarobljenici na Vojnoj ekonomiji Branjevo prvo ubijani iz mitraljeza, a onda kratkim rafalima iz pištolja, te da su u strijeljanju učestvovali svi optuženi.

Franc Kos je rekao da su pripadnici Desetog diverzantskog odreda Glavnog štaba Vojske Republike Srpske (VRS), pucajući iz mitraljeza, strijeljali zarobljenike koji su prethodno u grupama izvođeni iz autobusa.

-Ja sam postavio mitraljez, a Goronja je stajao pored. On je ispalio deset metaka i onda je pao. Znam da mu je Z1 rekao: ‘Mali, šta čekaš, hajde opleti’. U drugu grupu zarobljenih rafalno je pucao Z1, i tu je bilo puno ranjenih. Tada je drugooptuženi rekao: ‘Nemojte tako pucati’, pa je dogovoreno da se u grupe od po deset ljudi ispaljuju kratki rafali, kazao je Kos.

Tužilaštvo BiH tereti Kosa, skupa s Stankom Kojićem, Vlastimirom Golijanom i Zoranom Goronjom za genocid u Srebrenici, odnosno za učešće u ubistvima više od 800 muškaraca i dječaka u julu 1995. godine na Vojnoj ekonomiji Branjevo.

Prema optužnici, Kos je bio komandir Prvog voda Desetog diverzantskog odreda Glavnog štaba VRS-a, a Kojić, Golijan i Goronja pripadnici istog odreda, te su svi zajedno strijeljali zarobljenike, od kojih su neki imali poveze na rukama i očima.

Kos je ispričao kako su pripadnici Desetog diverzantskog odreda učestvovali u ubistvima oko 300 zarobljenika, nakon čega su došli pripadnici neke druge jedinice koji su nastavili sa strijeljanjem ostalih zarobljenika.

-Ti vojnici su galamili na nas, rekli su: ‘Sada ćemo vam pokazati kako se to radi’, i počeli su tući zarobljenike. Otišao sam i sjeo u kombi. Neko je rekao da i vozači, i ostali ljudi koji su na Branjevu, trebaju ubiti po jednog ili dva zarobljenika, kako ne bi bilo svjedoka. Vozači su morali strijeljati kad im je puška bila uperena u leđa, rekao je Kos.

Na upit Sudskog vijeća kako su zarobljenici izgledali prilikom odvođenja na likvidaciju, optuženi Kos je kazao da su uglavnom šutjeli.

-Neki su šutjeli, neki su nešto pričali u sebi, neki su i psovali. Mirno su išli do mjesta likvidacije. Ljudi su stajali u redu i mi smo ih strijeljali pucajući im u leđa, ispričao je Kos, dodavši kako su svi optuženi učestvovali u strijeljanju na Branjevu.

Četiri dana nakon strijeljanja na Branjevu, Kos je, kako je kazao, vidio komandanta Milorada Pelemiša i pitao ga šta se desilo, na šta mu je Pelemiš kazao da je to “viša sila”.

Prema kazivanju optuženog Kosa, Pelemiš mu nikada nije rekao od koga je dobio naredbu da pripadnike Desetog diverzantskog odreda pošalje na Branjevo.

- Nakon Branjeva, nama je rečeno da idemo u Pilicu. Došli smo do jedne kafane koja se nalazila kod Doma kulture u Pilici, a kada sam izašao, vidio sam da u Domu ima leševa, a čula se i pucnjava, rekao je Kos, prenosi BIRN Justice Report.

Naredno suđenje zakazano je za 29. novembar.

SREBRENICA GENOCIDE IS NOT A MATTER OF ANYBODY'S OPINION; IT'S A JUDICIAL FACT RECOGNIZED FIRST BY THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA AND SUBSEQUENTLY BY THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE.

PROSECUTORS TO CUT MLADIC'S INDICTMENT BY 46% TO SPEED UP HIS TRIAL

By Mike Corder

THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Yugoslav war crimes tribunal prosecutors proposed Friday drastically cutting back the amount of evidence they present to support charges in Ratko Mladic’s indictment, in an attempt to speed up his trial.

In a proposal sent to judges at the U.N. court, prosecutors said they will keep all 11 charges, including two counts of genocide, in Mladic’s indictment, but can cut back the number of crimes they seek to prove by more than 45 percent.

The allegations prosecutors will present “reasonably and appropriately reflect the criminal conduct of the accused and establish a basis for conviction on all 11 counts of the indictment,” the proposal says.

The 69-year-old former commander of the Bosnian Serb army is accused of masterminding atrocities by his forces throughout the Bosnian War.

He has refused to enter pleas to the charges so judges entered not guilty pleas on his behalf. No date has been set for his trial to start.

The proposal aimed at streamlining Mladic’s trial comes amid concerns about his health. Judges asked prosecutors to trim down the indictment in October.

Judges this week ordered a full medical checkup of Mladic, who has been experiencing pain from a kidney stone, had surgery for a hernia and been hospitalized with pneumonia since he was arrested in May and transferred to a cell in The Hague. His lawyers and family also say he had two strokes during his years as a fugitive.

Prosecutors at the tribunal typically present evidence of several crimes to prove a single count in an indictment, leading to trials that can last years.

Under Friday’s proposal, they would not call evidence in just under 46 percent of crimes currently listed in Mladic’s indictment.

The biggest cut would come in evidence about Serb-run concentration camps where non-Serbs were held, a reduction of just over 70 percent.

The smallest proposed cut is in evidence concerning the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, where Serb forces killed 8,000 Bosniak men and boys. Prosecutors had planned to present evidence of 22 separate crimes making up the massacre and proposed reducing that to 20 crimes, a cut of just 9 percent.

SREBRENICA GENOCIDE IS NOT A MATTER OF ANYBODY'S OPINION; IT'S A JUDICIAL FACT RECOGNIZED FIRST BY THE INTERNATIONAL CRIMINAL TRIBUNAL FOR THE FORMER YUGOSLAVIA AND SUBSEQUENTLY BY THE INTERNATIONAL COURT OF JUSTICE.