The Srebrenica Massacre - Nova Srpska Politicka Misao

Securing Verdicts: The Misuse of Witness Testimony at The Hague
the army of Bosnia-Herzegovina was in control, in the direction of
Kladanj. And, third, they could go wherever they wished to go, perhaps
to other countries. An incredulous Milosevic asked Deronjic:
So Radovan Karadzic, this same person who is telling you
that everybody should be killed, all the Muslims in Srebrenica,
later on insists that you meet in your capacity as new civilian
commissioner with the Muslims, with Mladic and UNPRO-
FOR, that you present these three options. That you present
these three options and also you try to identify war criminals in
the ranks of the Muslims. Mr. Deronjic, isn’t that quite contradictory
in relation to what you asserted before, that he had said
to you that all the Muslims should be killed? 88
Deronjic responded, “Do you think that in public directly he would
tell me of any other intentions that possibly—and I’m not claiming anything—he
or somebody else might have had and that these intentions
could be carried through in Potocari with the presence of the international
forces, notably UNPROFOR?” But the instructions were not
made in public, any more than the alleged instructions to kill were. So
why did he give them? Could the murder plan be carried out with any
hope of escaping observation? And for what purpose?
This was not the only incoherence that Milosevic identified in
Deronjic’s testimony. At one point, during Milosevic’s cross-examination,
Deronjic said that at that meeting with Beara on July 13, he had
told Beara, “What you are conveying to me as orders does not coincide
with the instructions I received from President Karadzic’. And then we
had a confrontation.” However, if that was the case, Milosevic pointed
out, why did he assume that Beara was the man Karadzic had sent as his
emissary to deal with the Muslim prisoner issue? “So according to you,
Beara told you that people needed to be killed, people should be killed,
and you replied that that was not in accordance with Karadzic’s instructions.…And
an hour or two ago you explained that it was Karadzic
who told you that…everyone should be killed. Is it now clear that
Karadzic did not tell you that everyone needed to be killed, and it is
questionable even what Beara told you if he was so drunk as you say?” 89
Moreover, Milosevic went on, Deronjic, far from taking orders from
Beara, had told the colonel that the Muslim prisoners needed to be
transferred to a military prison in order to establish whether there were
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