The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

Securing Verdicts: The Misuse of Witness Testimony at The Hague
to execute Muslim prisoners of war. Over a period of about four hours,
starting at 10 a.m., Erdemovic and members of his unit allegedly shot
in cold blood some 1,200 unarmed Muslims bussed-in from Srebrenica.
According to Erdemovic, only eight members of his unit initially carried
out the executions, though later on men from Bratunac who were not
members of his unit arrived to finish the job.
Erdemovic described men being taken off the buses 10 at a time.
They turned their backs, and Erdemovic and his seven fellow members
of the 10th Sabotage Detachment shot them. The executions were allegedly
carried out in a sequential way, starting at one end of the field
and moving toward the farm. After the conclusion of these killings, the
lieutenant colonel returned and ordered the 10th Sabotage Detachment
and the men from Bratunac to go to Pilica and kill some more Muslim
prisoners of war who were locked in a public building. Erdemovic and
the members of the 10th Sabotage Detachment refused to engage in
any more killings. Instead, they went to Pilica, sat in a café and listened
as the men from Bratunac killed the locked-up Muslims. A few days
later, a member of Erdemovic’s unit, in somewhat mysterious circumstances,
shot and seriously wounded him. He spent a month in a Belgrade
military hospital where he learnt various details about the
Srebrenica operation. Upon his release, he returned to the Republika
Srpska. Visiting Belgrade in February 1996, he made contact with a
freelance correspondent of ABC News, Vanessa Vasic-Janekovic, who
at the time was also working as “coordinator of the Tribunal Monitoring
Project” of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting 62 In his filmed
interview with her and with the French newspaper Le Figaro, Erdemovic
confessed to carrying out executions of Muslims fleeing Srebrenica. Almost
immediately, Serbian police arrested him and charged him with
war crimes. But before they could adjudicate his case, under strong pressure
from U.S. officials, the Belgrade authorities allowed him to be
transferred The Hague.
This then, in rough outline, is Erdemovic’s account of how he ended
up charged as a war criminal in The Hague. 63 Though he had confessed
to having taken part in an extraordinary bloodbath, he never faced trial.
On May 22, 1996, the ICTY indicted him for crimes against humanity,
though not genocide. On May 31, he pleaded guilty to one crime
against humanity. On June 27, a commission of experts concluded that
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