THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, May 5 (Hina) - More than 1,000 Bosniak civilians were killed during the first month of Serb occupation of Bratunac in eastern Bosnia, in the spring of 1992, said a witness for the prosecution in the trial of former
Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic before the Hague-based U.N. war crimes tribunal (ICTY) on Monday.
THE HAGUE/ZAGREB, May 5 (Hina) - More than 1,000 Bosniak civilians
were killed during the first month of Serb occupation of Bratunac in
eastern Bosnia, in the spring of 1992, said a witness for the
prosecution in the trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan
Milosevic before the Hague-based U.N. war crimes tribunal (ICTY) on
Monday. #L#
Witness Dzevad Gusic, president of the Party of Democratic Action
(SDA) in Bratunac, spoke about the engagement of Yugoslav People's
Army (JNA) troops from Serbia in setting up Bosnian Serb control
over the Bratunac municipality in 1992.
In the first month after paramilitary troops from Serbia and JNA
units entered Bratunac, in April and May of 1992, around 1,000
Bosniaks (Muslims), including women and children, were killed, and
the rest were persecuted over the following months, the witness
said.
Milosevic tried to discredit the witness with claims that he had
been one of the chief organisers of Muslim paramilitary formations
in Bratunac, that he had organised the illegal purchase of arms, as
well as that the Bosnian Serb entity of Republika Srpska had filed
charges against him for crimes against Serbs. Gusic negated the
claims. Milosevic will continue to cross-examine the witness
tomorrow.
During today's closed-door section of the court session a fully
protected witness for the prosecution continued testifying.
The tribunal has issued no information about this witness or the
subject of his three-day testimony, not even the number under which
the witness has been registered. Based on a list of witnesses for
the prosecution announced earlier, it is possible to assume that
this is a witness of events in Bosnia.
The prosecution started presenting evidence of war crimes in
Croatia and genocide and war crimes in Bosnia in late September
2002. Since March 31 it has been presenting evidence for both counts
of Milosevic's indictment simultaneously.
The prosecution decided to use this strategy to fill in voids in the
testimony schedule and also because of the impossibility of
separating the wars in Croatia and Bosnia, especially from the
perspective of knowledgeable Serb witnesses who were involved in
the war in both countries.
(hina) lml sb