Sarajevo Mega Genocide Case Begins

TU No 452, 12-May-06

Sarajevo Mega Genocide Case Begins

TU No 452, 12-May-06

IWPR

Institute for War & Peace Reporting
Saturday, 13 May, 2006
Petar Mitrovic, Miladin Stevanovic, Milos Stupar, Milenko Trifunovic, Brano Dzinic, Aleksandar Radovanovic, Slobodan Jakovljevic, Velibor Maksimovic, Dragisa Zivanovic, Branislav Medan and Milovan Matic are charged with being "conscious participants of a joint criminal act" of genocide between July 10 and 19. They all pleaded not guilty in February.



All the accused except Matic were members of the special police units in Sekovic. He was a soldier in the Bosnian Serb army.



In July 1995, Bosnian Serb troops killed nearly 8,000 male detainees, after the Bosnian Serb army overran the United Nations “safe area” of Srebrenica.



According to the indictment, all the accused were in charge of securing road communication from Srebrenica towards Zvornik and Tuzla, as a part of a plan to forcibly transfer 25,000 people from the UN protected zone.



The men are accused of participating in the execution of over 1,000 Bosnian Muslim men in a warehouse in Kravice, near Srebrenica, on July 13, 1995.



Defence lawyers for Petar Mitrovic and Mladen Stevanovic have complained that statements given by their clients to the investigators, in which they admitted their guilt, were flawed.



The defence teams objected to the statements being entered into the body of evidence, and about being prevented from asking witnesses about the circumstances in which the statements were taken.
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