TRIAL FOR SREBRENICA CRIMES THAT OCCURRED IN MAY 1992

Case: Savo Babić.

Savo Babić, merciless Serb war criminal.

The Indictment alleges that the Accused Savo Babić, who served as the Bratunac Military Police Commander, participated in a widespread and systematic attack on the Bosniak population of the municipality of Bratunac (adjoining to Srebrenica) in May 1992, three years before the Srebrenica Genocide. He ordered, committed and knowingly omitted to prevent, by his acts and omissions, the abuse of Bosniak civilians who were unlawfully deprived of their liberty in the detention camp „Vuk Karadžić" in Bratunac.

The Indictment further alleges that the Accused Savo Babić was appointed the Commander with the task of monitoring and securing the detention facility; he had full control over the conditions in this detention camp where more than 400 non-Serb civilians lived in constant fear and were subjugated, on a daily basis, to systematic interrogations, beatings, torture, physical and mental abuse, humiliation, and many were, as a result, killed in such conditions.

Daniel Toljaga wrote about the conditions in this camp in his "Prelude to the Srebrenica Genocide." We bring the excerpts from his study detailing the horrifying massacre of Bosniak civilians by Serb military and paramilitary forces in the „Vuk Karadžić" camp in the first days of the Bosnian war.

The Vuk Karadžić School Massacre (10 May 1992)

On 10 May 1992, the Yugoslav People’s Army, various paramilitary groups from Serbia and local Bosnian Serb forces jointly conducted one of the most violent assaults on the Bosniak population of Bratunac and the surrounding villages. Some 4,000 to 5,000 Bosniak civilians were expelled from their homes and detained in the local football stadium “Bratstvo” (Brotherhood). Serb forces stripped Bosniak civilians of their possessions and forcibly separated men from the women, killing some of them on the spot. The youngest known victim was a six month old girl, Narcisa Salihović, and the oldest a 110 year old woman, Zahida Suljagić.[43] A United Nations investigation found that some victims interned in the “Bratstvo” stadium were “forced to serve as blood donors, and some did not survive because so much blood had been withdrawn. Reportedly, the bodies of hundreds of individuals have been burned or thrown into the Drina River.”[44]

Several hundred of women and underage girls were taken from the Bratstvo stadium to the local Hotel Fontana where they were repeatedly raped. Other women and older men were herded onto buses, warned never to come back to their homes again, and forcibly expelled in the direction of the government controlled town of Kladanj.

About 700 unarmed Bosniak men were taken to a detention camp located in the gymnasium of the Vuk Karadžić primary school. When the men arrived in the camp, they were met by the sight of mutilated detainees. The men were offered very salty food with no water. They were brutally tortured over the next few days and some 350 of them were murdered in the most sadistic ways.

Physical abuse at the camp included beatings with objects including wooden sticks, wooden poles, steel pipes, metal bars, baseball bats, rifle butts, bare fists, kicking with boots, extraction of teeth with rusty pliers and suffocation. Some prisoners were decapitated and their heads held up for all to see, then kicked around the floor. Other prisoners were forced to move bodies before eventually being killed themselves and their bodies thrown on the pile. According to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, “Witnesses claim that the bodies of those killed were butchered, with nose, ears, genitals cut off, or crosses being cut into them. Those witnesses also claim that while that was being done, they were forced to sing Chetnik songs.”[45]

The local Muslim priest Mustafa Mujkanovic, was humiliated, tortured and beaten for hours. His throat was cut open in front of other prisoners after he defiantly refused to cross himself, drink alcohol or raise three fingers in the Serb manner (he lifted only two, symbolically asserting the struggle of the Bosniak people for freedom). (continue reading >>>)