The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

Securing Verdicts: The Misuse of Witness Testimony at The Hague
been against the war and nationalism. He claims that he had to join the
BSA in order to feed his family,” in the reassuring words of the second
trial court. 69 So this pacifist successively joins the armies of each of the
protagonists in the Bosnian civil war. He claimed that he had to join the
Bosnian Serb army because he feared for his life, but he offered no evidence
to show that such threats were real. So he talked pacifism but
acted like a mercenary, as did his killer colleagues who later fought for
the French in the Congo. 70 But his claims satisfied the ICTY judges.
Second, it is hard to understand how the Bosnian Serbs would in any
way benefit from such mass executions, which raises the question: For
whom was Drazen Erdemovic really working? In the aftermath of the
capture of Srebrenica, worldwide attention focused on the region with
crucial territorial negotiations lying ahead. Executions were sure to be
discovered, and such discoveries would inevitably serve the interests of
the Bosnian Muslim leadership in Sarajevo that was seeking NATO intervention,
not the Serbs who were expecting to obtain Srebrenica as
part of an exchange for Serb-held Vogosca, a subject of negotiation for
more than two years. Srebrenica’s police chief, Hakija Meholic, testified
that in 1993, Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic told him and other astonished
delegates to a Bosnian Muslim convention that he and President
Clinton had discussed a scenario in which “Chetniks” (a derisory
term for Serbs by Muslims) would kill 5000 Muslims at Srebrenica and
then NATO would intervene on their behalf. 71 Erdemovic testified that
his unit was paid lavishly to participate in crimes at Srebrenica, but
could not say who made the actual payment to the mercenary group. To
ABC’s Vanessa Vasic-Janekovic, he had claimed that his unit had been
promised 12 kilograms of gold. 72 Was Erdemovic’s mercenary group
being paid to provide an additional pretext for NATO intervention?
Why the vagueness about the source of the money if it was Bosnian
Serb officials? Is it likely that the Bosnian Serb army would make payment
in gold? Why didn’t the ICTY carry out a serious inquiry on this
matter?
Indulgent ICTY
Erdemovic, thanks to the indulgence of the ICTY, provided very few
details about the massacre itself. Having first been ordered not to harm
civilians, his unit, without any explanation, is ordered to slaughter un-
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