1. 1 Monday, 13 March 2000

    2 [Open session]

    3 [Prosecution Opening Statement]

    4 --- Upon commencing at 9.30 a.m.

    5 [The accused entered court]

    6 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Good

    7 morning, ladies and gentlemen. I hope that the

    8 interpreters can hear me. Good morning also to the

    9 technicians; good morning to counsel for the

    10 Prosecution, for the Defence; good morning, General

    11 Krstic. Good morning also to the public, who is also

    12 going to participate in this hearing.

    13 I wish to stress that the hearings are public

    14 before this International Criminal Tribunal. We will

    15 now be acting in accordance with Rule 84 of our Rules

    16 of Procedure and Evidence.

    17 I would now like to ask Mr. Dubuisson to call

    18 the case.

    19 THE REGISTRAR: [Interpretation] Case number

    20 IT-98-33-T, Prosecutor versus Radislav Krstic.

    21 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Thank you

    22 very much, Mr. Dubuisson. Could I have the appearances

    23 for the Prosecution please, Mr. Harmon.

    24 MR. HARMON: Good morning, Mr. President;

    25 good morning, Your Honours; good morning, counsel. I



  2. 1 am assisted this morning and will be throughout the

    2 trial by my colleagues. To my right, Mr. Peter

    3 McCloskey; and to his right, Mr. Andrew Cayley; and to

    4 my left, Ms. Kirsten Keith. Thank you.

    5 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Thank you

    6 very much, Mr. Harmon. Could I have the appearances

    7 for the Defence, Mr. Petrusic, please.

    8 MR. PETRUSIC: [Interpretation] Good morning,

    9 Mr. President; good morning, Your Honours; good morning

    10 also to my learned colleagues from the Prosecution.

    11 My name is Nenad Petrusic, I am representing

    12 General Radislav Krstic, together with my colleague, my

    13 co-counsel Mr. Tomislav Visnjic. Thank you very much.

    14 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Thank you

    15 Mr. Petrusic. We're now going to open the present

    16 case, and as I have already stated, I will give the

    17 floor to Mr. Harmon for the opening statement.

    18 Mr. Harmon, you have the floor.

    19 MR. HARMON: Thank you, Mr. President.

    20 Again, good morning, Your Honours.

    21 Following the conquest of the UN safe area of

    22 Srebrenica by the Bosnian Serb army in July of 1995,

    23 the victors abandoned all semblance of humanity and

    24 committed atrocities of a type and on a scale not seen

    25 since the Second World War.



  3. 1 Over a period of about five days, thousands

    2 of Bosnian Muslim civilians and Bosnian Muslim

    3 soldiers, who had laid down their arms, were

    4 systematically murdered by members of the Bosnian Serb

    5 army.

    6 This is a case about the triumph of evil, a

    7 story about how officers and soldiers of the Bosnian

    8 Serb army, men who professed to be professional

    9 soldiers, men who professed to represent the ideals of

    10 a distinguished and Serbian past organised, planned,

    11 and willingly participated in genocide or stood silent

    12 in the face of it. The authors of these foul deeds

    13 have left a legacy that has stained the reputation of

    14 the Serbian people and has disgraced ...

    15 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Excuse me,

    16 Mr. Harmon, for this interruption, but I think that

    17 General Krstic cannot follow us.

    18 General Krstic, can you hear me now?

    19 THE ACCUSED: Yes.

    20 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Okay.

    21 Thank you very much.

    22 I'm sorry, Mr. Harmon, for this

    23 interruption. Please continue.

    24 MR. HARMON: I was saying these particular

    25 deeds have disgraced honourable profession of arms.



  4. 1 In their wake, they murdered thousands of

    2 defenceless men and boys and shattered the lives of

    3 generations of Bosnians.

    4 The only way to attempt to eradicate this

    5 stain and to deliver justice to the victims of this

    6 tragedy is to expose the individual criminal

    7 responsibility of those persons who perpetrated and

    8 assisted in the commission of these heinous crimes.

    9 The Prosecutor in this trial will prove the

    10 criminal responsibility of one of those individuals,

    11 General Radislav Krstic.

    12 Now, let me put the events described in the

    13 indictment in the proper historical context of the war

    14 in Bosnia and Herzegovina. I'm going to do so in a

    15 cursory fashion, because I intend to introduce into

    16 evidence the report of the Secretary-General on

    17 Srebrenica and copies of all the relevant resolutions

    18 relating to the conflict.

    19 The Secretary-General's report sets forth in

    20 great detail a description of the events and the UN

    21 responses to them.

    22 The former Yugoslavia was a federal state.

    23 It was comprised of six republics and two autonomous

    24 provinces. In late June of 1991, Yugoslavia began to

    25 disintegrate and a succession of wars was fought first



  5. 1 in the Republic of Slovenia and then in the Republic of

    2 Croatia as the governments of those republics declared

    3 their independence. On the 6th of March, 1992, the

    4 government of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina

    5 declared its independence and a wide-scale war ensued.

    6 As in Croatia, the federal army of

    7 Yugoslavia, the JNA, fought alongside rebel Serb forces

    8 in order to secure territories declared to be part of

    9 newly emerging self-proclaimed Serbian entities.

    10 The Bosnian Serbs led by Dr. Radovan Karadzic

    11 were supported politically and militarily by rump

    12 Yugoslavia's government, which was in the hands of

    13 Slobodan Milosevic.

    14 Because of the combined military superiority

    15 of the JNA, paramilitary and police forces from Serbia

    16 proper, and Bosnian Serb forces, large areas within

    17 Bosnia and Herzegovina, the newly sovereign state,

    18 quickly seized and fell under the control of the Serb

    19 authorities.

    20 The military operations of the entities

    21 involved were coordinated and systematic, and by the

    22 end of 1992, this campaign resulted in the deaths or

    23 forced displacement of approximately two million

    24 non-Serbs who had been perceived to be a threat to the

    25 creation of an ethnically homogenous Serb-dominated



  6. 1 entity.

    2 The Security Council of the United Nations

    3 adopted a series of resolutions for the purposes of

    4 establishing peace commencing with Resolution 713,

    5 which implemented an arms embargo on the delivery of

    6 weapons and military equipment to Yugoslavia. This

    7 resolution, however, had negative ramifications and

    8 simply cemented the military imbalance between a

    9 well-armed JNA and rebel forces on one side and the

    10 poorly-armed forces opposing them.

    11 However, as a result of international

    12 pressure, the JNA was required to withdraw from Bosnia

    13 by the 19th of May, 1992. The actual withdrawal was

    14 deceptive as, in reality, substantial numbers of JNA

    15 personnel and significant amounts of war materiel were

    16 left behind in Bosnian Serb hands. The resulting

    17 vacuum was seamlessly filled by the nascent Bosnian

    18 Serb army known as the army of Republika Srpska. Its

    19 commander, a JNA serving officer by the name of Ratko

    20 Mladic, who in 1991 had commanded the JNA units

    21 actively supporting Serbian territorial claims in

    22 Croatia, took over command of this entity. Many other

    23 officers of the JNA, including the accused, Radislav

    24 Krstic, became members of the VRS, and I'll be

    25 referring to the army of Republika Srpska as "VRS"



  7. 1 throughout my remarks.

    2 The VRS was the blunt instrument of a

    3 political agenda that had as its goal the creation of

    4 an ethnically-pure independent Bosnian Serb entity

    5 within Bosnia and Herzegovina that would eventually

    6 unite with Serbia, Montenegro, and the breakaway

    7 republic of Serbian Krajina in Croatia to form a

    8 Greater Serbia. Non-Serbs were ethnically cleansed

    9 from the territories occupied by the VRS in a

    10 systematic and well-organised fashion.

    11 Now, let me turn my attention to the events

    12 in the Srebrenica area from the outset of the war, and

    13 let me first begin by locating for you where the

    14 municipality of Srebrenica is in Bosnia and

    15 Herzegovina. My assistant has placed on the ELMO for

    16 your viewing a map of Bosnia and Herzegovina, and on

    17 the right-hand side, you can see, marked in yellow, the

    18 municipality of Srebrenica. I see Mr. Dubuisson is

    19 handing to you as well hard copies of the items that

    20 I'm going to be referring to throughout my opening

    21 remarks.

    22 Srebrenica, according to the 1991 census, was

    23 a predominantly Muslim municipality, with 75 per cent

    24 of the population being Bosnian Muslims and 25 per cent

    25 being Serbs. Despite their numerical superiority at



  8. 1 the beginning of the war, the Muslims in the Srebrenica

    2 municipality were expelled from their homes and

    3 subjected to inhumane treatment by members of Bosnian

    4 Serb armed formations. Muslims were driven from their

    5 homes, many Bosniaks were murdered, and many other

    6 homes burned to the ground.

    7 However, the Bosnian Muslims reorganised

    8 themselves and took initiatives to reclaim the town of

    9 Srebrenica. In May 1992, they succeeded in this

    10 endeavour and continued to attempt to expand control of

    11 the territory around Srebrenica and were eventually

    12 able to link up with Zepa, a town to the south of

    13 Srebrenica. During this period of the conflict,

    14 Bosnian Serb civilians suffered. Many were killed,

    15 many were driven from their homes, and Bosnian Serb

    16 homes were destroyed. On the 7th of January, 1993,

    17 Serbian Orthodox Christmas, the village of Kravica was

    18 attacked by elements from Srebrenica, and according to

    19 Serb sources, many civilians were killed.

    20 The events at Kravica galvanised the Bosnian

    21 Serb military resolve to extinguish the military threat

    22 that was in the enclave, and a Bosnian Serb

    23 counter-offensive ensued. The counter-offensive was

    24 swift, effective, and brutal. As a result, Bosnian

    25 Muslim villages were overrun and tens of thousands of



  9. 1 Bosnian Muslims sought refuge in and around the

    2 besieged town of Srebrenica. The plight of these

    3 refugees became desperate as there was inadequate

    4 shelter and food for them.

    5 With the attention of the world focused on

    6 the plight of these refugees and the siege of

    7 Srebrenica, General Morillon, the French UNPROFOR

    8 commander in Bosnia, arrived to the besieged town on

    9 the 11th of March, 1993, and he told the people of

    10 Srebrenica that he would not abandon them. Now, this

    11 dramatic promise was captured on film and was aired

    12 throughout the world.

    13 About a month later, Bosnian Serb commanders

    14 threatened to enter Srebrenica, and three days later,

    15 on the 16th of April, 1993, the Security Council,

    16 acting pursuant to Chapter VII of its Charter, adopted

    17 Resolution 819. This resolution demanded that the

    18 parties treat Srebrenica as a safe area which should be

    19 free from any armed attack, and demanded the immediate

    20 withdrawal of Bosnian Serb forces from the area around

    21 Srebrenica.

    22 Two days later, the 18th of April, 1993, an

    23 agreement was signed between the commander of the

    24 Bosnian Serb forces, General Ratko Mladic, and the

    25 commander of the Bosnia government forces, General



  10. 1 Halilovic. Under the terms of this agreement,

    2 Srebrenica was to be demilitarised and UNPROFOR troops

    3 were permitted to be deployed into the area. On the

    4 8th of May, a more comprehensive agreement was signed

    5 by these two Generals covering both the Srebrenica

    6 enclave and the Zepa enclave.

    7 Now, as a result of these agreements,

    8 enclaves were created, and if I could have my assistant

    9 place on the ELMO a map, I will show Your Honours where

    10 those enclaves were in Bosnia. You'll see from this

    11 exhibit, there are three enclaves; the Srebrenica

    12 enclave, the Zepa enclave, and the Gorazde enclave, all

    13 located in the eastern part of Bosnia and all located

    14 within territory controlled by the Republika Srpska.

    15 Now, as a result of these events that I have

    16 described, Mr. President and Your Honours, the

    17 situation in Srebrenica stabilised.

    18 On the 18th of April, a small contingent of

    19 UNPROFOR soldiers from Canada entered Srebrenica, and

    20 their task initially was to oversee the

    21 demilitarisation of the town of Srebrenica. They

    22 remained deployed in Srebrenica until January of 1994

    23 when they were replaced by elements of the Dutch

    24 Battalion.

    25 Following these resolutions and agreements,



  11. 1 an uneasy calm came over the Srebrenica enclave.

    2 However, the enclave itself was never fully

    3 demilitarised, and an armed unit of the army of

    4 Bosnia-Herzegovina remained in it, making forays out of

    5 the enclave and attacking Serb targets in order to

    6 acquire food and ammunition. Because of the military

    7 threat that was posed by the presence of an armed unit

    8 within the heart of the Republika Srpska, valuable

    9 military assets of the VRS that were needed elsewhere

    10 in the war were frozen around the enclave in order to

    11 contain the perceived threat that was within the

    12 enclave.

    13 By 1995, the tide of war had changed, it had

    14 shifted against the VRS, and the valuable military

    15 assets that were frozen around this enclave were needed

    16 elsewhere. Therefore, a decision was taken at the

    17 highest political and military levels within the

    18 Republika Srpska to attack the safe areas. Thereafter,

    19 a military plan to attack Srebrenica, code named

    20 "Operation Krivaja 95" was prepared by General Krstic

    21 and others. It envisioned attacking the enclave

    22 through the south.

    23 On the 6th of July, 1995, Operation

    24 Krivaja 95 commenced and five days later the town of

    25 Srebrenica was captured. I'm going to go into greater



  12. 1 detail about that attack later, but I want to turn my

    2 attention now to the accused and tell you about him.

    3 General Krstic is a career soldier who at the

    4 time of the crimes described in the indictment was a

    5 capable and experienced senior officer who was trained

    6 in and familiar with his responsibilities and

    7 obligations under international law during the time of

    8 war.

    9 General Krstic was born on 15th February,

    10 1948 in the municipality of Vlasenica. He was educated

    11 in military academies in Sarajevo and in Belgrade, and

    12 after he graduated he was commissioned an officer and

    13 held a series of positions in the JNA.

    14 His first assignment was to the Centre of

    15 Military Schools in Sarajevo, where he served from 1972

    16 until 1981. Thereafter, he was sent to the General

    17 Staff Academy in Belgrade and from there he was

    18 transferred to Kosovo where he held a number of command

    19 and staff positions. At the time he left the JNA, he

    20 held the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel.

    21 Now, after the war started in Bosnia, the

    22 accused, like many other officers of the JNA, joined

    23 the VRS. The accused became a brigade commander of

    24 the 2nd Romanija Motorised Brigade which was part of

    25 the Sarajevo-Romanija Corps. In November of 1992, this



  13. 1 unit became part of the Drina Corps, and the accused

    2 remained its commander until September of 1994, when he

    3 assume the concurrent post of Chief of Staff and Deputy

    4 Commander of the Drina Corps.

    5 On the 29th of December, 1994, the accused

    6 stepped on an anti-personnel mine which resulted in a

    7 serious injury to his leg, part of which was

    8 amputated. Following his recovery and his

    9 rehabilitation, he returned and re-assumed his post as

    10 Chief of Staff/Deputy Commander of the Drina Corps. In

    11 May of 1995, he was promoted to the rank of

    12 General-Major in the VRS.

    13 Now, our evidence in this case will show that

    14 on the 13th of July, 1995, General Krstic issued orders

    15 under the title of Commander of the Drina Corps, and

    16 his subordinate units accepted and implemented those

    17 orders. Moreover, on the 14th of July, 1995, General

    18 Krstic's appointment as commander of the Drina Corps

    19 was formalised by the Supreme Commander of the VRS,

    20 Dr. Radovan Karadzic. This formal appointment became

    21 effective the day after it was issued.

    22 General Krstic remained the commander of the

    23 Drina Corps until the 21st of November, 1995, when he

    24 was then sent to the School of National Defence in

    25 Belgrade where he remained until September of 1996. In



  14. 1 that same month, he became the Chief Inspector of the

    2 VRS.

    3 In 1998, General Krstic was appointed to the

    4 rank of Lieutenant Colonel-General, which is the

    5 equivalent rank of a two-star General in the United

    6 States army or the British army. At the time of his

    7 arrest by SFOR forces, General Krstic was the commander

    8 of the VRS 5th Corps.

    9 Now, Your Honours, I'd like to turn briefly

    10 to describe for you the structure of the VRS and

    11 identify some of the personalities about whom you'll be

    12 hearing about during the course of this trial.

    13 The JNA had been one of the most professional

    14 armies in Eastern Europe, and after its departure, the

    15 VRS retained its basic structures.

    16 So if I could have my assistant put on the

    17 board the first exhibit I'd like to show you. Your

    18 Honours should have a small copy of this in front of

    19 you.

    20 This, as you can see --

    21 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone for the counsel,

    22 please.

    23 MR. HARMON: This, as you can see, is the VRS

    24 Main Staff structure. The Commander-in-Chief, the

    25 Supreme Commander, was Dr. Radovan Karadzic. He's not



  15. 1 shown on this. But directly subordinate to him was

    2 General Ratko Mladic, who was the Commander of the Main

    3 Staff. And the command from the Main Staff went

    4 directly to subordinate corps which are identified at

    5 the bottom, and you will see in the middle the Drina

    6 Corps with the commander being General Krstic. And

    7 you'll see this chart has been populated by individuals

    8 who have been identified in other responsible positions

    9 of command. Now, this chart reflects the structure at

    10 or about the 13th of July, 1993.

    11 Now, in addition to the direct chain of

    12 command flowing from General Mladic to the corps,

    13 General Mladic also had a staff at the Main Staff over

    14 which he had command. I'd like to identify for you

    15 some of the individuals who you'll be hearing about

    16 throughout the course of this trial.

    17 You will notice in the middle under "Staff

    18 Branches," where I am pointing, the name Lieutenant

    19 Colonel Ljubisa Beara. Colonel Beara was the Chief of

    20 Security for the Security Administration of the Main

    21 Staff. You'll be hearing a lot about this man

    22 throughout this trial. Another individual about whom

    23 you will be hearing is

    24 Colonel Jankovic, who was the Assistant Chief of

    25 Intelligence Operations for the Intelligence



  16. 1 Administration of the Main Staff, and you'll be seeing

    2 film footage with Colonel Jankovic during the course of

    3 this trial.

    4 Now I'm going to show Your Honours another

    5 chart, and it will reflect the structure and

    6 personalities of the Drina Corps at or about the time

    7 of the 13th of July, 1993.

    8 Now, Your Honours, coming down from the Main

    9 Staff command, from General Mladic, was the Drina

    10 Corps, and the commander of the Drina Corps, on or

    11 about the 13th of July was General Krstic. He had

    12 direct command over his subordinate units which are

    13 found at the bottom of this chart, and you will see

    14 these are various brigades, the Zvornik Brigade, the

    15 Bratunac Brigade, and the like. You will be hearing

    16 the names of some of the people who populate this

    17 particular exhibit. For example, you will be hearing

    18 the name Colonel Vinko Pandurovic. Colonel Pandurovic

    19 was the commander of the Zvornik Brigade. And you will

    20 be hearing about his assistant Major Dragan Obrenvic,

    21 who was his Chief of Staff. You will be hearing some

    22 of these other names who were the brigade commanders

    23 throughout this trial as well.

    24 Your Honours, like the Main Staff, the corps

    25 had a staff of its own, and General Krstic had command



  17. 1 over the people within his staff. You're going to be

    2 hearing a number of these names as well throughout the

    3 trial.

    4 Let me start with Lieutenant-Colonel Popovic,

    5 who was the Assistant Commander for Security. Let me

    6 continue with the name Lieutenant-Colonel Kosoric who

    7 was the Chief of Intelligence. His assistant, Major

    8 Pavle Golic. You will be hearing about Lazar Acimovic,

    9 who was the assistant for rear services. You will be

    10 hearing the names of, as well, other people who are

    11 identified throughout this particular chart.

    12 Now, Mr. President and Your Honours, in

    13 addition to the structure, the military rules and

    14 regulations and doctrines of the JNA were also adopted

    15 by the VRS. There was neither the time nor the

    16 inclination to reinvent the wheel, if you will.

    17 The central tenent of the VRS and the JNA was

    18 the concept of senior and superior command, which meant

    19 that members of the army were obliged to execute orders

    20 of a superior officer, unquestionably, completely, and

    21 on time. The only exception to this principle was

    22 found in the Laws Governing the Conduct of War, which

    23 both the former Yugoslavia and the Republika Srpska had

    24 adopted.

    25 On the 13th of May, 1992, General Radovan



  18. 1 Karadzic signed an order obligating the VRS to apply

    2 and to respect the international laws of war including

    3 treaties signed and ratified by the Socialist Federal

    4 Republic of Yugoslavia, Customary International Laws of

    5 War, and the General Accepted Principles of

    6 International Laws of War. Under the terms of this

    7 decree, commanders of all units and members of the VRS

    8 were required to abide by these rules and every

    9 superior officer was duty-bound to initiate legal

    10 proceedings against individuals who violated these

    11 rules.

    12 Let me give you an example of one such

    13 regulation. I'm referring to paragraph 21 of the

    14 Instructions on the Application of the International

    15 Laws of War on the Armed Forces. This rule states and

    16 I will quote:

    17 "An officer shall be personally liable for

    18 breaches of the Rules of the Laws of War if he knew or

    19 should have known that units subordinate to him or

    20 other units or individuals were planning the commission

    21 of such breaches and at the time, when it had been

    22 still possible to prevent their commission, failed to

    23 take the measures to prevent such breaches.

    24 "The officer will also be held personally

    25 liable who, aware that breaches of the rules of law had



  19. 1 been committed, fails to institute disciplinary or

    2 criminal proceedings against the offender or if

    3 instituting the proceedings does not fall into his

    4 purview, fails to report the breach to the superior

    5 officer in charge."

    6 The similarities of this rule to our Statute

    7 are quite obvious.

    8 Interestingly, paragraph 20 of this same

    9 document states, and I quote:

    10 "Perpetrators of such criminal acts may also

    11 answer before an international court if such a court

    12 has been established."

    13 From his military education and from the

    14 rules and regulations of both the JNA and VRS, there is

    15 no doubt that General Krstic was fully aware of his

    16 obligations under international law. He chose instead

    17 to violate, with impunity, every fundamental duty

    18 imposed upon him as an officer and as a commander, and

    19 that is the reason he sits before you today in

    20 judgement.

    21 Turning now to the indictment that Your

    22 Honours have before you. We have charged General

    23 Krstic with eight counts. One count of genocide, one

    24 count of the complicity to commit genocide, five counts

    25 of crimes against humanity, and one count of a



  20. 1 violation of the laws and customs of war.

    2 All of the acts described in the indictment

    3 occurred within the Drina Corps area of responsibility,

    4 the area that was under the command of General Krstic,

    5 and all of these acts relate to the events that

    6 occurred during and after the fall of the UN safe area

    7 of Srebrenica, acts which resulted in the ethnic

    8 cleansing of the Bosnian Muslims from the Srebrenica

    9 enclave.

    10 The counts of the indictment can be divided

    11 into two broad categories. The first category is the

    12 deportation and forcible transfer of an estimated

    13 20.000 to 30.000 Muslims from the Srebrenica enclave by

    14 members of the VRS on the 12th and 13th of July 1995.

    15 The second broad category is the systematic, organised

    16 mass murder of thousands of Muslim civilians and

    17 soldiers who had laid down their arms by members of the

    18 VRS. Most but not all of these executions occurred

    19 between the 11th and the 17th of July, 1995.

    20 Under Article 7(1) of our Statute, we have

    21 charged General Krstic with committing, planning,

    22 instigating, ordering or otherwise aiding and abetting

    23 and the planning, preparation, or execution of these

    24 charges.

    25 We've also charged General Krstic, under



  21. 1 Article 7(3) of our Statute for failing to prevent his

    2 subordinates from committing the crimes identified in

    3 the indictment and for failing to punish them for

    4 having done so.

    5 The direct and circumstantial evidence that

    6 we will present to Your Honours will prove beyond a

    7 reasonable doubt both forms of this criminal

    8 liability.

    9 Now, during the course of this trial, you're

    10 going to be confronted with a number of issues. The

    11 first issue you're going to confront is when did

    12 General Krstic become the commander of the Drina

    13 Corps. Now, I've mentioned previously in my remarks

    14 evidence that we will present that will demonstrate

    15 that General Krstic was the commander of the Drina

    16 Corps and exercised his authority as commander during

    17 the relevant times of this indictment.

    18 Another issue, Your Honours, that you're

    19 going to confront is did the Bosnian Muslims leave the

    20 Srebrenica enclave on the 12th and 13th of July

    21 voluntarily or were they forcibly expelled and

    22 deported. Our evidence, which I'm going to address

    23 shortly, will describe how they were forcibly deported

    24 and expelled from the enclave.

    25 Another issue that you will face in this



  22. 1 trial and must decide is whether thousands of Bosnian

    2 Muslim civilians were summarily executed by the VRS as

    3 described in paragraph 24 of the indictment and whether

    4 those acts constituted genocide. The evidence that

    5 these large-scale murders occurred, as described in the

    6 indictment, is overwhelming, and we assert that they

    7 constituted genocide.

    8 Another issue that you will decide in this

    9 case is this: Did General Mladic take over exclusive

    10 command of the Drina Corps and create a separate chain

    11 of command that went around General Krstic for purposes

    12 of committing genocide?

    13 Now, in this regard, Your Honours, the High

    14 Command case from the Nuremberg jurisprudence addressed

    15 the question of whether or not a commander becomes

    16 responsible for actions committed within his command,

    17 pursuant to orders passed down independent of him. The

    18 tribunal stated that under such conditions, the

    19 commander had four choices: (1) he could issue an

    20 order countermanding the order; (2) he could resign;

    21 (3) he could sabotage the enforcement of the order

    22 within a somewhat limited sphere; and (4) he could do

    23 nothing.

    24 The tribunal went on to say, and I

    25 quote: "Under basic principles of command authority



  23. 1 and responsibility, an officer who merely stands by

    2 while his subordinates execute a criminal order of his

    3 superiors which he knows is criminal violates a moral

    4 obligation under international law. By doing nothing,

    5 he cannot wash his hands of international

    6 responsibility."

    7 Our evidence will show that the crimes that

    8 were committed by members in units of the VRS Main

    9 Staff and the Drina Corps were crimes that were

    10 committed jointly. These units were working together,

    11 and General Krstic participated in and was fully aware

    12 of these crimes when they were being committed and he

    13 actively supported their commission.

    14 Another issue that Your Honours will face in

    15 this case is whether General Krstic was even aware of

    16 these killings that are described in the indictment

    17 during and after their commission. Our evidence is

    18 going to show, Your Honours, that General Krstic was

    19 fully aware of these killings while they were being

    20 committed.

    21 Those are some of the principal issues that

    22 you'll face in this case and we'll be addressing

    23 throughout this trial.

    24 I would now like to return to the invasion of

    25 the Srebrenica enclave by the VRS. As I mentioned to



  24. 1 you earlier, the invasion started on the 6th of July,

    2 1995, and it included attacks on Dutch observation

    3 posts that ringed the enclave. As a result of the VRS

    4 attacks on these observation posts, Dutch soldiers

    5 yielded their positions to the advancing VRS, and many

    6 of them were taken hostage by the VRS and later

    7 threatened with death if the airstrikes being conducted

    8 by NATO continued.

    9 Between the 6th of July and the 11th of July,

    10 the invasion into the enclave proceeded in fits and

    11 starts. The VRS advance met little or no resistance

    12 from armed Bosnian elements from within the enclave, or

    13 from UNPROFOR soldiers. During the advance into the

    14 enclave, soldiers of the VRS systematically burned

    15 Muslim homes.

    16 Now, as the VRS soldiers advanced into the

    17 enclave, the Muslim inhabitants panicked, they were

    18 terror-stricken, and they fled to the town of

    19 Srebrenica and gathered around the UN compound in

    20 Srebrenica. On the 11th of July, the VRS shelled the

    21 UN compound. They killed a number of Muslim refugees

    22 within the compound and injured a number of them, and

    23 this created absolute panic and terror among the

    24 thousands of refugees who had gathered in and around

    25 the town of Srebrenica. They were terrified, and as a



  25. 1 result they fled from the UN enclave in Srebrenica to

    2 the UN base in Potocari, a distance of about three or

    3 four kilometres.

    4 During the course of this trial, we are going

    5 to present to Your Honours video footage of these

    6 events, and you'll see for yourselves the absolute

    7 panic and despair of these people as they fled from

    8 Srebrenica to Potocari. It was sheer pandemonium and

    9 chaos. But by the morning of the 12th of July, 1995,

    10 an estimated 20.000 to 30.000 refugees had arrived

    11 around the enclave -- I'm sorry, around the UN compound

    12 at Potocari.

    13 We are also going to present video footage

    14 for Your Honours that was taken on the 11th of July,

    15 showing General Mladic, General Zivanovic, General

    16 Krstic, and other high-ranking members of the VRS

    17 triumphantly entering the deserted town of Srebrenica.

    18 During their victory march, a Serb war correspondent

    19 interviewed General Mladic, and in that interview,

    20 General Mladic said, and I quote only a part of his

    21 interview, "that the moment had finally come to take

    22 revenge on the Turks here." By "Turks," he meant the

    23 Muslims of Srebrenica. General Krstic was present in

    24 Srebrenica with General Mladic when he made these

    25 remarks.



  26. 1 We will also present the testimony of

    2 Mr. Drazen Erdemovic, who was a member of the 10th

    3 Sabotage Detachment, an elite military unit that was a

    4 part of the Main Staff. Mr. Erdemovic participated in

    5 the invasion of the enclave and entered into the town

    6 of Srebrenica itself on the 11th of July, 1995.

    7 Mr. Erdemovic will describe to Your Honours the

    8 cold-blooded execution of a military-aged, unarmed

    9 Muslim who had been captured by his unit, and at the

    10 order of his commanding officer, a member of the 10th

    11 Sabotage Brigade killed the Muslim. This

    12 killing portended the tragedy of things that were to

    13 come.

    14 Mr. President and Your Honours, not all of

    15 the Muslims who had fled, fled in the direction of

    16 Potocari. Another group of approximately 15.000

    17 Muslims fled in the direction of Jaglici and

    18 Suesnjari. This group of people included members of

    19 the armed military formations that were inside the

    20 enclave; it included civilians; it included women; it

    21 included children, and these people fled in the

    22 direction of Tuzla, which is located on this map here

    23 [indicates]. This was their ultimate destination.

    24 Now, about a third of this column, the people in it had

    25 light arms, they had rifles, and the object of this



  27. 1 particular indictment deals, in part, with --

    2 [Technical difficulty]

    3 MR. HARMON: There's a technical problem,

    4 Mr. President, so I'll stop. Ready to proceed?

    5 As I said, thousands of these people in the

    6 column who had fled eventually surrendered or were

    7 captured by the VRS and were later murdered.

    8 On the evening of the 11th, when the column

    9 had departed from the enclave, other significant events

    10 occurred. There were two meetings that were held at

    11 the Hotel Fontana in Bratunac. The first meeting

    12 occurred at 8.30 in the evening, and its participants

    13 included General Mladic, General Zivanovic, and Colonel

    14 Karremans, who was the UNPROFOR Dutch commander. This

    15 meeting was quite short, and at this meeting, General

    16 Mladic insisted on knowing whether or not Colonel

    17 Karremans had ordered airstrikes against his troops.

    18 This was an intimidating meeting. You'll see full

    19 footage of it. He also demanded that the Dutch

    20 commander return at 11.00 that same evening with a

    21 representative of the Muslim people, and we are going

    22 to present to Your Honours video footage of that

    23 meeting, and you'll see the context, the ambience, in

    24 which this occurred.

    25 Now, the second meeting did occur, it



  28. 1 occurred at 11.00. Colonel Karremans did, indeed,

    2 return to the Hotel Fontana with members of his staff,

    3 and he brought with him a man who was a representative

    4 of the Muslim people, a teacher by profession, a man by

    5 the name of Nesib Mandic. This particular meeting was

    6 designed to intimidate Mr. Mandic and send a message to

    7 the Muslims who were still within the enclave. At this

    8 meeting, in front of Mr. Mandic was the town sign of

    9 Srebrenica. Symbolically, it was broken.

    10 During this meeting, General Mladic informed

    11 Mr. Mandic that he wanted a clear position from

    12 Mr. Mandic whether the Muslim people wanted to stay,

    13 survive, or disappear. He demanded that the Muslims of

    14 Srebrenica lay down their arms, and if they didn't do

    15 so, he threatened their destruction.

    16 Now, to reinforce the import of these remarks

    17 and to increase the psychological terror on Mr. Mandic,

    18 at the time that General Mladic was making these

    19 remarks, a pig was being slaughtered outside the window

    20 of this meeting, and its death cries could clearly be

    21 heard. Sitting alongside General Mladic when those

    22 menacing remarks were made was one of General Mladic's

    23 principal subordinates, General Krstic.

    24 At the conclusion of this meeting, General

    25 Mladic insisted on another meeting the following



  29. 1 morning at 10.00, and he insisted that Muslim

    2 representatives appear, and he was going to wait to

    3 hear their decision. And we're going to present to

    4 Your Honour the video footage of this second meeting.

    5 The next morning, on the 12th of July,

    6 Colonel Karremans and members of his staff returned to

    7 the Hotel Fontana, and with them they had three Muslim

    8 representatives, including Mr. Mandic. At this

    9 meeting, General Mladic again threatened that the

    10 Muslim people could either survive or disappear, and

    11 once again, at his side when these remarks were made,

    12 was the accused, General Krstic. General Mladic

    13 insisted that members of the army of Bosnia-Herzegovina

    14 surrender their arms, and then he informed the Muslim

    15 representatives that the civilians within the enclave

    16 could stay if they wanted, or they were free to leave.

    17 The meeting didn't last long.

    18 In the afternoon of the 12th of July, 50 or

    19 60 buses and trucks arrived in Potocari and the

    20 deportation began. Our evidence is going to show that

    21 General Krstic played a central role in ordering and

    22 coordinating the arrival of the buses that were to

    23 deport the Muslims from the enclave. Our evidence will

    24 also show that after the buses arrived, General Mladic,

    25 General Krstic, and other high-ranking members of the



  30. 1 Drina Corps staff were in Potocari. Members of the VRS

    2 included Lieutenant-Colonel Popovic, the Drina Corps

    3 Assistant Commander for Security, and

    4 Lieutenant-Colonel Momir Nikolic of the Intelligence

    5 and Security Service of the Bratunac Brigade, again,

    6 names you are going to be hearing throughout the course

    7 of this trial.

    8 Our evidence will show that in the period of

    9 the 12th and 13th of July, members of the VRS

    10 terrorised the refugees before they were expelled

    11 thereby facilitating their removal from the enclave.

    12 During the 12th and the 13th of July, members of the

    13 VRS committed indescribable acts upon members of the

    14 refugee community, including murdering them, raping

    15 them, committing acts of mayhem on them. These

    16 barbaric acts absolutely panicked the refugees, and

    17 some of them became so desperate that they committed

    18 suicide or attempted to do so.

    19 As the refugees fled toward the buses, Muslim

    20 men and boys were separated from their families and

    21 detained in Potocari. The process of collecting the

    22 victims had begun. Those who had been separated were

    23 robbed, some were beaten, some were summarily executed

    24 in Potocari. While these events were occurring,

    25 members of the Main Staff and the Drina Corps were



  31. 1 present in Potocari. Following their separation from

    2 their families, the men and the boys were forced onto

    3 buses and they were driven from the enclave to distant

    4 locations that their captors did not want the world to

    5 see.

    6 This became obvious when DutchBat soldiers

    7 who had been assigned to escort these buses on the

    8 orders of their commanders, in order that no harm

    9 befell the occupants of those buses, were

    10 systematically stopped by the VRS. Their equipment was

    11 taken, their vehicles were confiscated, and, as one

    12 Dutch soldier was to remark later, "it was as though

    13 they were trying to remove our eyes and our ears." In

    14 retrospect, it is clear from these actions that the

    15 Bosnian Serbs did not want anyone to interfere with

    16 their genocidal plans.

    17 The expulsion of all the Bosnian Muslims from

    18 Potocari took a little over a day and was finished by

    19 2000 hours on the 13th of July. During this period, an

    20 estimated 20.000 to 30.000 Muslims were deported from

    21 the enclave. However, a few Muslims did remain in the

    22 enclave, hidden in and around their homes. They were

    23 hunted down with dogs and they were slaughtered. The

    24 grim reality for the Bosnian Muslims was that remaining

    25 in Srebrenica was not an option.



  32. 1 One of the only Muslims who was permitted to

    2 remain in the enclave after the deportations were

    3 completed was Mr. Nesib Mandic, the representative I

    4 previously mentioned. He remained sequestered in the

    5 UN compound in Potocari. On the 17th of July, a

    6 Bosnian Serb representative appeared at the UN compound

    7 with a prepared declaration, and he insisted that

    8 Mr. Mandic and a Dutch officer sign this declaration.

    9 It was eventually signed under duress by Mr. Mandic and

    10 Major Franken, a Dutch officer.

    11 The declaration stated inter alia that the

    12 meeting that had been held on the 12th of July was

    13 convened at the request of the Muslim civilian

    14 authorities, which was patently false. It asserted

    15 that, and I quote: "The evacuation was carried out by

    16 the Serb side correctly ... that there were no

    17 incidents and that the Serbs had abided by the Geneva

    18 Conventions and the international laws of war." The

    19 declaration identified General Krstic as being present

    20 at that meeting. This document was created solely for

    21 propaganda purposes. In the days that followed, the

    22 VRS and the Republika Srpska propaganda machines

    23 attempted to shield their ugly crimes with this false

    24 document. It was constantly referred to.

    25 Now, Mr. President and Your Honours, I'd like



  33. 1 to turn my attention to another subject, and that is

    2 the killings.

    3 Our evidence will show that a minimum number

    4 of 7.574 persons from Srebrenica are missing and

    5 presumed dead as a result of the events that I've been

    6 describing. Both members of the Bosnian army who were

    7 armed and unarmed civilians within the column that was

    8 fleeing in the direction of Tuzla were killed by Serb

    9 gunners as the column advanced and fought its way

    10 through Serb occupied territory. We don't know how

    11 many people in this column were killed. The exact

    12 number of those killed will never be known to us.

    13 These people who were in the column and

    14 killed as it advanced towards Tuzla are not, in the

    15 legal sense, the victims of the crimes alleged in the

    16 indictment. Our indictment, instead, focuses on the

    17 fate of thousands of Bosnian Muslim men and boys who

    18 were separated in Potocari and were captured by or

    19 surrendered to the VRS after they fled from the enclave

    20 on the 11th of July.

    21 We will prove beyond a reasonable doubt that

    22 they were systematically murdered by members of the VRS

    23 who were under the command and control of the VRS Main

    24 Staff and the accused. The manner in which these

    25 people perished and the scale of this atrocity is truly



  34. 1 incomprehensible by every standard of humanity.

    2 When the Office of the Prosecutor conducted

    3 exhumations at various locations, including those

    4 associated with killing sites identified in

    5 paragraph 24 of the indictment, we found the mortal

    6 remains of 1.866 victims. The remains of another

    7 estimated 2.571 victims are believed to be in grave

    8 sites that have been probed by the Office of the

    9 Prosecutor but not yet completely exhumed. In

    10 addition, other grave sites remain to be located.

    11 In the course of conducting these

    12 exhumations, we found a number of pieces of

    13 identifications on the bodies confirming that the

    14 deceased were from Srebrenica. I'm going to ask my

    15 assistant to place an example of one such piece of

    16 identification that we found on the ELMO.

    17 You will see, Mr. President and Your Honours,

    18 there is a name of this individual, the name

    19 Srebrenica. The town of Srebrenica is located at the

    20 bottom left-hand side of this document. This

    21 individual is an individual who is identified as

    22 missing on the ICRC list.

    23 Now, we also found, in the course of our

    24 exhumations, photographs on some of the victims. I'm

    25 going to ask my assistant to place one such photograph



  35. 1 on the ELMO. Will you lower it, please. Thank you.

    2 These artefacts that we found are poignant

    3 reminders of happy moments long past. It's images like

    4 these, like this one on the ELMO, that touch our

    5 humanity and remind us that the victims of these crimes

    6 include the living as well as the dead.

    7 Now, let me tell you what else we found. We

    8 found blindfolds like this. Indeed, Mr. President and

    9 Your Honours, this particular blindfold that I am

    10 showing you is a blindfold -- is this blindfold that is

    11 found on this person who we discovered in a grave site

    12 in Kozluk. His hands were bound. He was blindfolded

    13 like many of the other individuals who were pulled out

    14 of this particular grave site and out of countless

    15 others that we exhumed.

    16 Contrary, Mr. President and Your Honours, to

    17 the VRS and the Republika Srpska propaganda, these

    18 individuals were not the collateral casualties of

    19 battle. They were people who were liquidated as part

    20 of the genocidal plan perpetrated by the VRS against

    21 the Muslim population of Srebrenica. These cowardly

    22 acts were planned and meticulously organised and

    23 executed by members of the VRS Main Staff and members

    24 of the Drina Corps in a joint operation that lasted for

    25 several days. They weren't simple military operations



  36. 1 but actions that involved extensive planning and

    2 coordination at a time when active combat was occurring

    3 in the Drina Corps area of responsibility, particularly

    4 in the Zvornik area.

    5 Most but not all of the mass execution sites

    6 are located in the Zvornik area. Those sites include

    7 the Branjevo Military Farm, Pilica, the Dam, Orahovac,

    8 and you can see that these sites are located far away

    9 from the enclave in Srebrenica. Not all of the mass

    10 execution sites were located so far away.

    11 You will be hearing evidence about a mass

    12 execution that took place at the Kravica warehouse,

    13 very close to the enclave and very close to the town of

    14 Bratunac where the meetings with General Mladic and

    15 General Krstic occurred. You will be hearing about a

    16 mass execution site that occurred in the Cerska Valley,

    17 but the bulk, the majority of the mass executions took

    18 place far to the north.

    19 Now, I'd like for Your Honours to consider

    20 for a moment what was required to conduct an operation

    21 of this scale. First, it involved the issuing, the

    22 transmitting, and the dissemination of orders to all

    23 units that participated in the movement, the killing,

    24 the burial, and the reburial of the victims. It

    25 involved the assembling of a sufficient number of



  37. 1 vehicles and buses, trucks, to transport the thousands

    2 of victims from the location of their capture and

    3 surrender to detention centres that were located near

    4 the execution sites. It involved obtaining fuel for

    5 these vehicles, and one must bear in mind that at the

    6 time there was a fuel embargo and that fuel was

    7 extremely precious.

    8 This operation involved providing guards and

    9 security for each of the vehicles that moved north

    10 toward the killing sites. It involved identifying

    11 detention centres that were secure enough and in close

    12 proximity to the execution fields. It involved

    13 providing secure routes for prisoner convoys. It

    14 involved obtaining sufficient numbers of blindfolds and

    15 ligatures so these prisoners could be bound before they

    16 were executed. It involved obtaining sufficient men to

    17 secure the actual detention facilities themselves, to

    18 guard the prisoners for the days or for the hours that

    19 they were kept there before they were executed. It

    20 required obtaining transportation to take the prisoners

    21 from the detention facilities to the killing sites

    22 themselves. It required obtaining the killing squads,

    23 organising the killing squads, and arming the killing

    24 squads.

    25 This operation required, as well, the



  38. 1 requisitioning and transportation of heavy-duty

    2 equipment necessary to dig the large mass graves, and

    3 it required men to bury the thousands of victims who we

    4 were later to discover.

    5 It also required, Mr. President and Your

    6 Honours, preparing and coordinating propaganda from the

    7 Drina Corps and at all levels of military and political

    8 establishment in order for the Republika Srpska to

    9 attempt to refute the well-founded claims that

    10 atrocities had taken place.

    11 These extermination operations involved the

    12 cooperation, knowledge, and participation of countless

    13 members of the army. They were known to the civilian

    14 population. General Krstic was fully aware of these

    15 plans, and he and his subordinates actively assisted in

    16 them, even though the evidence may show that General

    17 Krstic was, at times, in the area of Zepa conducting a

    18 military operation to take over that particular safe

    19 area.

    20 Now, when it became apparent, Mr. President

    21 and Your Honours, that the International Community was

    22 aware that thousands of Muslims were missing and had

    23 been executed, General Krstic and his colleagues, units

    24 under his command, persons under his command, engaged

    25 in a systematic effort to cover up their crimes. What



  39. 1 they did was they went back to their original killing

    2 fields. Many of the victims of these mass executions

    3 were buried at the sites where they had been executed.

    4 In September, in that area, these locations

    5 were dug up and the bodies from these various locations

    6 were transferred a considerable distance to these

    7 remote and isolated locations on the Cancari road and

    8 the Hodzici road.

    9 There are a number of secondary grave sites.

    10 We have visited those grave sites, and we have

    11 conducted exhumations of some of those gave sites, and

    12 Your Honours will also see aerial images of the

    13 cover-up in progress.

    14 Now, let me show you, Mr. President and Your

    15 Honours, a photograph. This is a photograph,

    16 Mr. President and Your Honours, that was taken at the

    17 Kozluk site. Again, we conducted an exhumation at this

    18 site. The earth that was on these bodies originally

    19 was taken off, and you will see this photograph

    20 illustrates how clumsy and inept they were when they

    21 attempted to cover up their crimes.

    22 This large trough is a mark caused by an

    23 earth digger that was used by the VRS to pull out the

    24 bodies. Obviously, as you can see here in this

    25 photograph, they missed a significant number of those



  40. 1 bodies. They also severed some of the bodies. But our

    2 evidence will show that this was part of the effort to

    3 cover up the crimes.

    4 Now, you'll also note in this picture, and

    5 you'll have an opportunity later to study it, but a

    6 number of these people have their hands behind their

    7 backs.

    8 When Your Honours consider the scale and the

    9 coordination and the planning of these reburial

    10 efforts, it will be apparent to Your Honours that

    11 General Krstic was fully aware of this and that this

    12 operation required significant logistical support and

    13 planning.

    14 Now, Mr. President and Your Honours, since

    15 one of the issues in this case is whether there were

    16 executions that took place at all, particularly those

    17 identified in paragraph 24 of the indictment, I'd like

    18 to summarise briefly for you some of the evidence that

    19 we're going to present in respect of those specific

    20 allegations.

    21 I'd like to turn first, Mr. President, to the

    22 execution that occurred at the Kravica warehouse. Now,

    23 this execution, our evidence will show, took place on

    24 the 13th of July, 1995.

    25 Kravica is located near -- let me show you.



  41. 1 When the column left in the direction of Tuzla, it fled

    2 from the village of Susnjari, and it attempted to make

    3 its way in the direction that I'm using my pointer to

    4 indicate. The road that you see on this illustration

    5 is a road that was ringed with elements of the VRS and

    6 other units, and the column had extreme difficulty in

    7 penetrating in this iron of steel that was ringing

    8 their escape route. Many thousands of Bosnian Muslims

    9 surrendered to the VRS at these locations along the

    10 road, and they were collected and they were gathered at

    11 various sites, including a football field and the

    12 like.

    13 A significant number of the people who had

    14 been captured and who had surrendered were taken to an

    15 agricultural facility located in Kravica, and at this

    16 particular location, the individuals were jammed into

    17 that particular agricultural facility when the facility

    18 itself -- parts of that facility were fully packed, the

    19 VRS soldiers opened fire on the people who were inside

    20 that facility.

    21 I put on the ELMO, for your viewing, a

    22 portion of the facade of this particular facility, and

    23 you can see the pockmarks of heavy machine-gun fire

    24 that was directed into the facility. In addition,

    25 grenades were thrown into the facility, and all but a



  42. 1 few people in that facility were killed.

    2 The few survivors who remained, some of them

    3 cried out for help. They were summarily executed. And

    4 from this particular episode, only three persons are

    5 shown to have survived. Two of them will testify

    6 before you. They will testify, among other things,

    7 that after these killings took place, heavy equipment

    8 arrived at the scene and started to take these people,

    9 these victims, these bodies, and bury them. They were

    10 buried, many of them, at a location, Glogova, that I'm

    11 pointing to.

    12 Now, during the cover-up that took place

    13 probably in September, the bodies at Glogova were

    14 reburied, were exhumed and reburied a considerable

    15 distance away. They were hidden along a forested and

    16 not-often-travelled mountain road near Zeleni Jadar in

    17 five particular secondary sites.

    18 The next location that I'm going to describe

    19 to Your Honours is Tisca, and I'm pointing to it with

    20 my pointer. Now, Tisca was a location where the buses

    21 that had taken the people from the enclave drove, and

    22 it was at this location where the people on those buses

    23 were taken off the buses and permitted to walk six

    24 kilometres to Bosnian Muslim-held territory, but Tisca

    25 was the final separation and screening point for men



  43. 1 who had somehow gotten on those buses and not been

    2 detected. At that location, men, and some women, were

    3 separated from the people who had disembarked from the

    4 buses. The men were put in a school, the Luka school,

    5 and they were detained there by the VRS. Then they

    6 were taken in trucks to execution fields. Your Honours

    7 will hear the testimony of the sole survivor of one of

    8 those trucks.

    9 The next location, Your Honour, that I'll

    10 talk about is Orahovac. Now, Orahovac is a small

    11 village north of the enclave, and on the 14th of July,

    12 hundreds of Muslim men who had been detained in

    13 Bratunac were transported to the school nearby, the

    14 Grbavci school and detained in it. They were later

    15 blindfolded and transported in trucks to the village of

    16 Orahovac, and they were summarily executed. Members of

    17 the Zvornik Brigade participated in the executions and

    18 participated in the burials of the victims. We will

    19 present forensic evidence that will corroborate the

    20 testimony of the victim-survivors that you will be

    21 hearing from.

    22 Our evidence is going to show that this mass

    23 grave site was exhumed and the bodies were then

    24 transported to various secondary sites along the

    25 Hodzici road.



  44. 1 The next cited was the Dam, another site of a

    2 mass execution. This Dam was located near a village of

    3 Petkovci, where on the 14th of July, hundreds of

    4 Bosnian Muslims were transported and detained in the

    5 Petkovci school. At that location, many of them were

    6 summarily executed.

    7 During the evening of the 14th of July and

    8 the morning of the 15th, VRS military personnel

    9 transported those individuals to the Dam, where they

    10 murdered them. The victims were buried at the Dam, and

    11 they were later reburied in remote locations in order

    12 to conceal the crimes.

    13 We're going to present to Your Honours the

    14 testimony of survivors from that execution.

    15 Now, our evidence is going to show,

    16 Mr. President and Your Honours, that on the 15th of

    17 July, 1995, at 10.00 in the morning, Colonel Beara, who

    18 was the chief of security for the Main Staff, had a

    19 conversation with General Krstic on an open line.

    20 Colonel Beara complained to the defendant that he had

    21 "3.500 parcels to distribute and he had no solution."

    22 "Parcels" was a codename for Bosnian Muslims, and

    23 "distribute" was a code for murdering them. He asked

    24 General Krstic for more men for the job and the

    25 defendant endeavoured to assist him. At the time of



  45. 1 this conversation, there were still thousands of

    2 Muslims yet to be executed.

    3 Now, the next location that I'll describe to

    4 Your Honours is the Cerska Valley, which is located

    5 here. Between the 14th and the 21st of July, a mass

    6 execution occurred there as well. We will present the

    7 testimony of an individual who had fled with the column

    8 and who concealed himself in the woods above the area

    9 of Cerska. In the time frame -- sometime in the time

    10 frame that I have described, he saw three buses full of

    11 Muslim men heading up that main road, a small road,

    12 into the Cerska Valley. Those buses were followed by

    13 heavy equipment. From his advantage point, he heard

    14 soon thereafter repeated rounds of small-arms fire.

    15 He descended from his position and he

    16 discovered the execution site. He directed members

    17 from my office to this location, and we conducted an

    18 exhumation at that site, and there we were able to find

    19 150 bodies of males, aged from approximately 14 to

    20 50 years old. Many of the victims were bound with wire

    21 ligatures, and I am holding and will present into

    22 evidence later, Your Honours, one of the wire ligatures

    23 that we recovered from the execution site. Your

    24 Honours, I've asked my assistant to place on the ELMO a

    25 copy of a photograph that we took at the Cerska Valley



  46. 1 site, and Your Honours can see in it the wrist bones of

    2 an individual and you can see the wire ligature that is

    3 around the wrist bones.

    4 Mr. President and Your Honours, I'm going to

    5 now tell you about the executions that took place at

    6 the Pilica school, the Branjevo Military Farm, and the

    7 Pilica Cultural Dom. Now, I'll indicate where those

    8 locations are with my pointer.

    9 If Your Honours can see, these are extremely

    10 north of the enclave [indicates], and these killings

    11 that took place at the Pilica school occurred between

    12 the 14th and the 16th of July. The murders that took

    13 place at the Branjevo Military Farm and the Pilica

    14 Cultural Dom occurred on the 16th of July, 1995.

    15 We are going to prove that these executions

    16 took place, Mr. President, through the testimony of a

    17 number of survivors -- not many, but a number of

    18 survivors who were able to make their way through to

    19 freedom after these executions took place. We're also

    20 going to present to Your Honours forensic evidence that

    21 will corroborate their testimonies.

    22 We will present for Your Honours'

    23 consideration the testimony of Mr. Drazen Erdemovic,

    24 who was a member of the 10th Sabotage Detachment, who

    25 participated in these executions. He also witnessed



  47. 1 the executions at the Pilica Cultural Centre.

    2 Mr. Erdemovic has been convicted by this Tribunal and

    3 he's been sentenced by this Tribunal for his

    4 participation in these events.

    5 Now, these mass graves that were located at

    6 the sites of these particular killings were also

    7 exhumed. They were exhumed probably in September, and

    8 the remains of the victims from the Branjevo Military

    9 Farm were reburied along the Cancari road, far to the

    10 south.

    11 After these particular executions at the

    12 Branjevo Military Farm and Pilica Dom had been

    13 completed, our evidence will show that Lieutenant

    14 Colonel Popovic, who was General Krstic's Assistant

    15 Commander for Security, called the Drina Corps

    16 headquarters and asked for General Krstic. General

    17 Krstic wasn't present, and Colonel Popovic left a

    18 message for the accused that he had "finished the

    19 job."

    20 Lastly, Mr. President and Your Honours, we're

    21 going to present evidence of an execution that occurred

    22 at Kozluk. I'm indicating that location on the chart

    23 [indicates]. That site of that particular mass

    24 execution occurred within a kilometre of the

    25 headquarters of the Drina Wolves, one of the units that



  48. 1 was subordinate to General Krstic in the Drina Corps.

    2 At this location, Mr. President and Your

    3 Honours, hundreds of Muslims were summarily executed.

    4 They were buried there. I've shown you two large

    5 images from that particular execution site. In

    6 September, the VRS returned to dig up some of the

    7 bodies that were buried there and reburied them along

    8 an isolated road far from Kozluk.

    9 When we conducted exhumations at the Kozluk

    10 site, we found the remains of 340 individuals. Most of

    11 the victims were bound with ligatures. The remains of

    12 another 158 victims related to these killings were

    13 found at one of the secondary sites along the Cancari

    14 road.

    15 Mr. President and Your Honours, I have

    16 concluded my opening remarks. Let me just say in

    17 conclusion that the Office of the Prosecutor will

    18 present evidence that will prove beyond a reasonable

    19 doubt that the crimes alleged in the indictment

    20 occurred and that General Krstic was a full participant

    21 in each of them.

    22 Thank you.

    23 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Thank you,

    24 Mr. Harmon.

    25 We are now going to have a break, a



  49. 1 half-an-hour break, so that the Prosecutor has an

    2 opportunity to prepare himself for the presentation of

    3 his evidence. We will be back at 11.30.

    4 --- Recess taken at 11.00 a.m.

    5 --- On resuming at 11.34 a.m.

    6 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Can you

    7 hear me, General Krstic? General Krstic, can you hear

    8 me? Very well.

    9 Now, pursuant to Article 85, we shall proceed

    10 to the production of evidence by the Prosecution.

    11 Mr. Harmon, you have the floor.

    12 MR. HARMON: Thank you, Mr. President; thank

    13 you, Your Honours. I would like to call Jean-Rene

    14 Ruez.

    15 [The witness entered court]

    16 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Good

    17 morning, Mr. Jene-Rene Ruez. Can you hear me? You

    18 will now take the solemn declaration, please.

    19 THE WITNESS: [Interpretation] Yes, I can hear

    20 you very well, Mr. President. But I shall testify in

    21 English.

    22 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Very well.

    23 This is one of the official languages of the Tribunal.

    24 THE WITNESS: I solemnly declare that I will

    25 speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the



  50. 1 truth.

    2 WITNESS: JENE-RENE RUEZ

    3 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] You may be

    4 seated. I believe you are already accustomed to this

    5 procedure. You will now be invited to answer questions

    6 which Mr. Harmon will be asking of you, and after that

    7 you will answer the questions that will be posed to you

    8 by the Defence. Be at ease. You're a master of

    9 sorts.

    10 Yes, Mr. Harmon.

    11 MR. HARMON: Thank you.

    12 Examined by Mr. Harmon:

    13 Q. Good morning, Mr. Ruez.

    14 A. Good morning.

    15 Q. Could you state your name, please, and spell

    16 your last name for the record.

    17 A. My name is Jene-Rene Ruez, R-u-e-z.

    18 Q. Mr. Ruez, what is your current occupation?

    19 A. I'm an investigation team leader at the ICTY

    20 since early -- I arrived at the Tribunal in April 1995,

    21 and I've been in charge of this investigation since

    22 that time. I was officially nominated team leader here

    23 in 1987 -- 1997, sorry.

    24 Q. Since you have been employed at the Tribunal,

    25 the Office of the Prosecutor, have you been working



  51. 1 exclusively on the Srebrenica investigation?

    2 A. Yes. Exclusively on this topic since July

    3 1995. The first mission in the territory was 20 July

    4 1995 and arrival in Tuzla 21 July 1995.

    5 Q. Now, Mr. Ruez, to your right is Prosecutor's

    6 Exhibit number 2. It's a large map. First of all, can

    7 you identify that map and can you tell the Judges where

    8 it was acquired?

    9 A. This map is part of a collection of documents

    10 which were seized at the headquarters of the Zvornik

    11 Brigade in January 1998. It's one among many other

    12 documents which were seized during the search of that

    13 headquarters. This map is a description of the

    14 military operation as seen by those who did it.

    15 Q. Can you please approach the map and with a

    16 pointer can you explain significant features about that

    17 map to the Judges? There's a microphone there.

    18 A. So first of all, this map is not an

    19 operational map which was used during the time of the

    20 operation. This is a map which has been done

    21 afterwards in order to show what happened on a military

    22 point of view.

    23 The important elements on this map are that

    24 it shows the attack from the -- coming from the south

    25 of the enclave. As we know, indeed the first



  52. 1 operations, military operations conducted there

    2 happened in the south. This map is confirming this

    3 element.

    4 The arrows show the penetration of the Serb

    5 forces towards Srebrenica and the takeover of

    6 observation posts. I will not discuss that element

    7 now. A military analyst will testify about all these

    8 details, as well as Dutch peacekeepers who were in the

    9 area at that time.

    10 It also shows that after having entered

    11 Srebrenica, the operation here stops and then other

    12 forces are coming north, from Bratunac, and penetrate

    13 the enclave and arrive in Potocari here.

    14 Other elements that can be seen is that there

    15 was indeed military activities conducted in an area

    16 south-west of the enclave, which is called the Bandera

    17 triangle. When you look at daily SITREPS, situation

    18 reports, from UNPROFOR at that time and also comments

    19 which Mladic was making, General Mladic was making,

    20 heavy combat apparently was going on in that part of

    21 the enclave named Bandera triangle.

    22 What it shows also is the concentration of

    23 the refugees and military people who tried then to flee

    24 the enclave, start to go assemble the 11th, in the

    25 evening, in the area north-west of the enclave which is



  53. 1 the area of Susnjari, which is the neighbourhood of a

    2 little hamlet but it is the entire area here we are

    3 talking about.

    4 On 11 July, indeed the population understood

    5 that the enclave would fall and took two courses of

    6 action. The women, the children, and the elderly, but

    7 also a certain number of men who decided to take that

    8 chance and face the Bosnian Serbs who would enter the

    9 area, they probably thought that since they had nothing

    10 personally to hide, they would not be harmed, but

    11 apparently they made a wrong decision on that.

    12 All the other ones who didn't want to face

    13 the risk of being captured decided to take off from the

    14 area, and following instructions which were in fact to

    15 follow the power line which is running all around --

    16 all along the stretch of road between Bratunac and

    17 Konjevici, the intersection here, decided to go cross

    18 country and take the direction of Udrc Mountain and

    19 then towards north.

    20 These are all elements that we found out from

    21 witnesses, and who are now confirmed by the map of

    22 those who did the operation. The map is not very

    23 precise. The arrow here shows a straight line between

    24 Susnjari and the intersection of Konjevici. In

    25 reality, the track was different. First the people



  54. 1 took the direction a little bit here north-west and

    2 were walking closer to the ridge of hills which are

    3 along this asphalt road, much closer than it shows on

    4 the map. We will return on this later on.

    5 The very important detail which is marked on

    6 this map is the blocking position that the Bosnian Serb

    7 army put in place in this area here, which is an area

    8 we call Konjevic Polje, which is in that location here,

    9 and Nova Kasaba, a little town a bit more south.

    10 On July 12, once the Bosnian Serb army

    11 realised what in fact was happening, which was that a

    12 huge column of men was trying to flee the area and

    13 indeed take this direction. Initially there was an

    14 element of surprise, so no possibility to challenge

    15 that column. Part of that column was armed. The first

    16 group was organised in brigades. The forces inside

    17 Srebrenica were quite structured, and they recreated

    18 brigades at the moment they were assembling. Those who

    19 had weapons were mainly walking in front.

    20 So then the blocking position was put in

    21 place. The army managed to walk through. When I say

    22 the army, it was, in fact, those who were carrying

    23 weapons and those who were with them, but once these

    24 people passed, then this was completely blocked and no

    25 one could walk through any more.



  55. 1 Then the map shows that the trail taken by

    2 this column goes towards Udrc Mountain. Here also it

    3 is not very precise because it goes straight above

    4 Udrc, which is quite a high mountain, 1.042 metres high

    5 and very difficult to walk through here. Later they

    6 made the tour.

    7 Here it shows battles which took place in

    8 this location. I won't deal with that also but around

    9 the 13th and 14th July --

    10 THE INTERPRETER: Microphone, please.

    11 A. The microphone does not work? Sorry. What

    12 did you miss here?

    13 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Just a

    14 minute, please.

    15 A. I was saying the map is not very precise here

    16 because the arrow goes straight above Udrc Mountain,

    17 which is not realistic since it's a quite high

    18 mountain, very difficult terrain in reality. The

    19 movement was much less precise than that. They were

    20 turning around.

    21 Once they arrived in the area here which is

    22 the south-west of Zvornik, ambushes were set to block

    23 this column, but these ambushes were not successful.

    24 In fact, the column punched through these Serbs

    25 positions, managed to capture equipment, anti-aircraft



  56. 1 guns, mortars, and even managed to capture Serb

    2 prisoners.

    3 More details will probably be given later on

    4 about this, but this is really not the main topic of

    5 the investigation.

    6 The important part here also is that on the

    7 16th July 1995, it shows how the column managed to

    8 break through the lines. In fact, there was some

    9 agreement initially to let the column go through, but

    10 very quickly this agreement also was breached and

    11 combat had to take place in order for that column to

    12 pass the Bosnian Serb lines. The date of that event is

    13 marked on it. It's the 16th July 1995.

    14 A very important aspect here is the 14th of

    15 July and part starting the 13th. The Bosnian Serb army

    16 realised that this column was causing a very severe

    17 threat to the town of Zvornik. The reason is that all

    18 the forces who were in this area, not all of them were

    19 but let's say the main forces in this area were down

    20 towards Srebrenica to conduct the Srebrenica

    21 operation. So there was a decision to mobilise all men

    22 who were able to carry a gun, and all these people were

    23 then sent under military and police control to a secure

    24 Zvornik area.

    25 There is an important element. Several



  57. 1 witnesses will at some point probably develop on that

    2 and explain what consequences they think it has for

    3 them.

    4 The important aspect also you will see when

    5 we switch on the other map, is that this area here is

    6 close to locations where we have detention sites and

    7 execution sites. But these sites are not connected

    8 with the military operation. The dead bodies that we

    9 will talk about in the area are absolutely not

    10 connected with these combat activities, but they happen

    11 nearby.

    12 That is all I would say on this map at this

    13 stage.

    14 MR. HARMON:

    15 Q. Mr. Ruez, while you're standing, does this

    16 map indicate the boundary of the Drina Corps area of

    17 responsibility?

    18 A. Yes, indeed. Critical element. We will

    19 notice when we switch on the other map that all the

    20 crime scenes we are talking about are within the

    21 precise limits of the Drina Corps.

    22 This map marks the north limit of the corps,

    23 which is here, and you will see that the identified

    24 crime scene that we have most at the north of our map

    25 is the area of Pilica, which is this area here; so just



  58. 1 under the north border of the Drina Corps. All the

    2 rest of the crime scenes are indeed within these

    3 limits.

    4 Q. Mr. Ruez, you can have a seat again. Thank

    5 you very much.

    6 MR. HARMON: If I can have the assistance of

    7 the usher. We have our next exhibit underneath,

    8 Exhibit 2, and if I can ask you, Mr. Usher, to remove

    9 this exhibit and expose the next exhibit.

    10 Now, Your Honours, what's before Your Honours

    11 is the large map that I used in my opening statement.

    12 It's been marked as Exhibit 1E.

    13 Q. Mr. Ruez, what I'd like you to do for the

    14 Judges is to summarise the principal events relating to

    15 your investigation and use this exhibit as a means to

    16 illustrate various points in your testimony. So if you

    17 would kindly -- if you want to stand up, use the

    18 microphone and the pointer, would you please commence

    19 your testimony.

    20 MR. HARMON: Mr. President and Your Honours,

    21 we have a legend that we're going to identify later and

    22 introduce for this particular map that will be marked

    23 Exhibit 1E bis. We don't have additional copies. We

    24 can put one now on the ELMO for Your Honours, and we

    25 will present later to Your Honours a copy.



  59. 1 A. So, indeed, this is the map which summarises

    2 the view that we have of these events from the

    3 investigation. The colour codes are very important to

    4 understand, indeed, these locations.

    5 The triangles represent areas where prisoners

    6 were concentrated. The red triangles mark execution

    7 sites, but small-scale execution sites. In reality,

    8 what we consider small-scale execution sites in this

    9 environment is roughly under 100 individuals. At the

    10 red circles, we have mass execution sites. Then we

    11 have yellow circles which indicate the locations where

    12 mass graves can be found, those that we call primary

    13 mass graves, undisturbed mass graves. The ones which

    14 have a cross in it are disturbed mass graves, because,

    15 as you know, there was a robbing operation of all these

    16 graves, which I will not develop at this stage but at

    17 the next one. The result of that operation is the

    18 creation of secondary mass graves scattered in the area

    19 in order -- that in case we would discover some of

    20 them, we would never be able to demonstrate how many

    21 people, indeed, had been massacred during this

    22 operation. So there are a number of them already

    23 marked on the map, but we will enter these details at a

    24 later stage.

    25 So based on this map, the reconstruction of



  60. 1 the event is that, as I said, the people from the

    2 enclave took two courses of action. The ones who

    3 decided to flee towards Potocari and seek the

    4 protection of the United Nations at the UN base went to

    5 Potocari. The evacuation of this group started on July

    6 12, after the meetings which were held in Bratunac

    7 between General Mladic, members of his staff, and

    8 representatives of the Muslim population, and it

    9 started 12.00 -- after 12.00, around 2.00 p.m.

    10 The people were taken on board buses, driven

    11 through Bratunac, towards Konjevic Polje, then towards

    12 Vlasenica, in order to reach the confrontation line

    13 which was before Kladanj. The last stop was in the

    14 area here [indicates], and then the people had to walk

    15 through a canyon towards Kladanj which was, at the

    16 time, under the control of the Muslim forces here

    17 [indicates].

    18 On the way, a lot of separations took place.

    19 There were checkpoints set along the road. The UN

    20 personnel who tried to follow the convoys in order to

    21 make sure that the people would reach their destination

    22 were stopped. The UN personnel was stripped of their

    23 equipment and couldn't fulfil their mission and find

    24 out exactly what was going on.

    25 At many instances, we have witnesses talking



  61. 1

    2

    3

    4

    5

    6

    7

    8

    9

    10

    11

    12

    13 Blank page inserted to ensure pagination corresponds between the

    14 English and French transcripts

    15

    16

    17

    18

    19

    20

    21

    22

    23

    24

    25



  62. 1 about soldiers checking the contents of the buses and

    2 taking out men who were in it, even young boys. The

    3 women will tell you that they had to dress kids as

    4 girls in order to make sure that they would not be

    5 taken off of the bus. Some men still managed to get on

    6 board these buses and reach Kladanj, mainly at the

    7 beginning of the operation. The more we enter the

    8 operation, then the less men would be able to go

    9 through, and at one point, no one is going through.

    10 The men who tried to get on board of the

    11 buses in Potocari had special treatment. They are

    12 separated at the moment that they try to get on board,

    13 and they are taken to a specific location in Potocari

    14 which we call the White House. Inside that house,

    15 people were jammed, and once there were enough numbers,

    16 specific buses were waiting for them and they were

    17 loaded only on these buses, and from there taken to

    18 Bratunac. In Bratunac, they were kept in various

    19 locations. This lasted during the two days of the

    20 evacuation, the 12th and the 13th.

    21 We only know these locations from men who

    22 managed to survive later on their execution, but we

    23 know that a large number of men at one point were,

    24 indeed, in Bratunac town. I will have to return to

    25 Bratunac later on, since Bratunac will then become the



  63. 1 main concentration area for all the prisoners captured

    2 in this part of the territory.

    3 Those who tried to flee through the woods,

    4 approximately 15.000 men, we cannot be more precise

    5 than that. This is the number which is given by nearly

    6 all the people who were there at the time. It's an

    7 assessment which is, indeed, very difficult to make, we

    8 cannot either confirm or deny it, but we will keep that

    9 figure since it is the one generally considered, as

    10 well as the figure of 25.000 people who were taken out

    11 of the enclave and bused to Kladanj. That number is

    12 also very difficult either to confirm or to deny.

    13 The flight through the woods started on the

    14 11th, in the evening, during the night. People waited

    15 until night-time to try and sneak out, and they had to

    16 cross the minefields at the border of the enclave. So

    17 first they had to open a one-metre-large path in these

    18 minefields, and then it was a very long process to get

    19 out of the area. This created a very long column of

    20 men which stretched all along the area here

    21 [indicates], in order to pass here [indicates], at

    22 12.00 -- at the end of the afternoon.

    23 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] I'm sorry

    24 to interrupt you, Mr. Harmon, but it will be perhaps

    25 convenient to say the names of the villages that we can



  64. 1 find on the map, instead of saying "here" and "there."

    2 Because, as you know, we have the transcript, and now

    3 that we have a map, it's easy, but if we only look at

    4 the transcript without the map, it's going to be

    5 difficult. So if you can please state the name of the

    6 village as well. Thank you.

    7 MR. HARMON:

    8 Q. Mr. Ruez.

    9 A. So at 12.00 in the afternoon, one part of the

    10 column is already reaching the area of Konjevic Polje;

    11 meanwhile, others are still stretched all along the

    12 ridge of the hills which is along the asphalt road

    13 between Bratunac and Konjevic Polje, just in the area

    14 to the south of Kravice.

    15 Several ambushes were set on the way, and

    16 also shelling of these columns in order to break it

    17 into smaller parts. One main ambush occurs at 12.00 in

    18 the afternoon, or at the end of the afternoon, just

    19 south of the village of Kravice, in a place we call

    20 Kamenica, because there's a little hamlet there called

    21 Kamenica. Unfortunately, there are many villages

    22 called Kamenica, and this can create some confusion

    23 with an area north that the people know as being

    24 Kamenica. That is the reason why we will call this

    25 area here [indicates] Cancari.



  65. 1 Following this ambush, a lot of panic is

    2 already instilled among the people who were trying to

    3 flee. Most of the people don't really know the

    4 ground. Most of the refugees who are in the Srebrenica

    5 enclave are not from Srebrenica. The population inside

    6 of the enclave are people who were "ethnically

    7 cleansed" in 1992 and were coming from Bijeljina, from

    8 Zvornik, from Vlasenica, and from other municipalities

    9 in the vicinity. So they don't know the area and

    10 that's the reason why they had this guideline, to

    11 follow the power line.

    12 But after that, many of these people didn't

    13 know where to go. Serb forces begin to infiltrate the

    14 column, people talk about the wounded being killed, and

    15 no one is trusting anyone. At some point, people start

    16 shooting at each other, thinking that they are

    17 confronted with enemies. So a huge panic is happening

    18 in this place.

    19 The consequence of that is that on the 13th,

    20 in the morning, all of these people decide, in fact, to

    21 surrender. Many try to prevent them from doing so

    22 since they witnessed that at the moment of surrender

    23 people are executed on the spot. We're talking here

    24 about small-scale executions, individuals or groups of

    25 two or three. Nevertheless, the decision is made, in



  66. 1 fact, and a massive movement of surrender starts.

    2 On the 13th, in the morning, the people begin

    3 to go down a valley and arrive in the area of Sandici.

    4 They also arrive in the area nearby which is not marked

    5 on the map which is Lolici. In fact, when surrendering

    6 starts, it happens in many locations. We're not only

    7 talking about the massive ones.

    8 On the 12th, in the evening, I also said that

    9 the spearhead of the column managed to pass through the

    10 Serb lines, but the rest of it was trapped behind. So

    11 we have the same situation on the 13th, in the morning,

    12 in the area of Konjevic Polje as we had south of

    13 Kravice. Surrendering starts. So we have at that

    14 moment, the day of the 13th, in the morning, people who

    15 are assembled in meadows; one meadow of Sandici and one

    16 soccer field here [indicates] in Nova Kasaba.

    17 I also have to say that this movement of

    18 surrender was encouraged by the illusion that

    19 protection would be provided to those who surrendered.

    20 The Bosnian Serb forces who were present in the area

    21 and who stripped the UN personnel of their equipment

    22 used that equipment to lure the people and make them

    23 believe that they would be under the protection of

    24 UNPROFOR. Soldiers were wearing blue helmets. Bosnian

    25 Serb soldiers who were using UN APCs always gave the



  67. 1 feeling to the refugees who were trying to escape that

    2 there was some kind of protection which would be for

    3 them. Also, soldiers were shouting messages through

    4 megaphones, inciting the people to surrender and

    5 telling them that they would be under the protection of

    6 the International Red Cross, present in the place,

    7 according to what they were saying.

    8 The fate of those who were on these meadows

    9 is that most of them were taken on board of buses or

    10 trucks and taken back to Bratunac, but there are

    11 exceptions to this. On the 13th, a large group of

    12 prisoners is assembled on the meadow of Sandici. At

    13 the beginning of the afternoon, the General passes in

    14 this area, makes a speech to the prisoners, and then

    15 leaves the place. Shortly afterwards, a first group is

    16 taken on board the buses and taken to Kravice, jammed

    17 inside an agriculture warehouse. A second group,

    18 larger than the first one, is then also marched towards

    19 the Kravice warehouse and jammed into it. We will

    20 return to the events there in detail.

    21 But then once the people were inside the

    22 warehouse, the soldiers who were guarding them started

    23 to open fire from all the openings of the building and

    24 throwing grenades inside, and the people who were

    25 inside the warehouse were killed, but not all of them,



  68. 1 since we have also survivors of this execution.

    2 Many small-scale executions happened in this

    3 vicinity which are not even marked on the map. The

    4 witness --

    5 THE INTERPRETER: Could the witness slow

    6 down, please.

    7 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Mr. Ruez,

    8 you've been asked to slow down, please. It is

    9 necessary to bear in mind all the time that there are

    10 interpreters between the two of us. So please slow

    11 down. Thank you.

    12 A. I'm sorry.

    13 The situation at the soccer field at Nova

    14 Kasaba is different than in Sandici. There is no

    15 massive execution happening at Nova Kasaba. There are

    16 few executions happening there. The fate of the

    17 prisoners assembled here [indicates] is transportation

    18 towards Bratunac.

    19 So on the 13th of July, Bratunac begins to be

    20 packed with these prisoners. We know that several

    21 buildings were used; the Vuk Karadzic school was used;

    22 an old school behind the Vuk Karadzic school was used

    23 as well; one hangar, which is yet not identified, but

    24 the investigation is still ongoing on that and as well

    25 as on many other aspects, this warehouse also was



  69. 1 used. It seems, in fact, that the few facilities

    2 available were jammed with people, since several

    3 witnesses will explain that they were staying on board

    4 of the buses and trucks which were in lines, and we

    5 have three lines of buses and trucks filled with

    6 prisoners in Bratunac town.

    7 We will pinpoint them on the map later on,

    8 but we have one line of trucks waiting in front of

    9 Vihor garages, one line of trucks waiting in front of

    10 the Vuk Karadzic school, and one line of trucks at the

    11 outskirts of Bratunac town, at the west of it.

    12 During these days, the 12th and the 13th, the

    13 deportation of the population within the enclave was

    14 still going on. So you had movements of buses, in

    15 fact, going towards Kladanj, but you also had movements

    16 of trucks and buses going towards Bratunac.

    17 The men who were separated at the last

    18 checkpoint, which was in the place called -- little

    19 place called Luke, where there is only one little

    20 building which is an elementary school, were put inside

    21 the school. From there the 13th, in the evening --

    22 this process might have happened many times but we only

    23 know about once since there is only one person who

    24 managed to survive that process -- the men were taken

    25 on board of little trucks, driven towards Vlasenica.



  70. 1 Vlasenica they turned left, which is, in fact, north of

    2 Vlasenica, in an area of hills, of wooded hills, and

    3 somewhere in this area the people were executed. We

    4 have never managed to find the precise spot where this

    5 execution took place.

    6 We also know, from witnesses who were blocked

    7 on a hill just above Konjevic Polje, that indeed people

    8 who were captured or surrendered were executed in this

    9 area, but we are talking here about one, two, or three

    10 bodies, and we have never found these locations and we

    11 will not. The main location, we have found it, but can

    12 implement -- the witnesses who talks about these events

    13 is one witness who witnessed a massive execution

    14 happening here. Not massive according to the code that

    15 I previously gave, but still it talks about three

    16 groups of prisoners, one group of 30, a second group of

    17 30, and then a larger group of about --

    18 THE INTERPRETER: Could the witness slow

    19 down, please.

    20 MR. HARMON:

    21 Q. Mr. Ruez, will you slow down.

    22 A. And he witnessed how these people got shot on

    23 a meadow. We will return on that meadow later on. We

    24 managed to find this one and process the crime scene.

    25 Also, at a date which is still difficult to



  71. 1 fix, but it will probably happen at the time the

    2 witness will be coming here, several witnesses talk

    3 about an event which happened in the valley of Cerska.

    4 I will give all the details about it when we will be

    5 talking about that precise location, but we have an

    6 execution site of 150 people in the valley of Cerska.

    7 They were transported by bus into the valley and shot

    8 there. I will provide you with the details of that

    9 later on.

    10 We also have a smaller execution of

    11 16 people at the intersection between the Jadar River

    12 and the Drljaca River.

    13 The situation during the night of the 13th

    14 and the 14th is -- in Bratunac is the preparation of

    15 the evacuation of all these prisoners towards other

    16 locations. There are several versions about what

    17 happened at that time, and I must admit it is a bit

    18 difficult for us to explain all the details at this

    19 moment since indeed the investigation is ongoing and we

    20 are, at the moment, in contact with witnesses from all

    21 sides. We are still collecting and we are still

    22 collecting information from them, and everything we are

    23 saying during this proceeding is helping the people a

    24 lot. We are trying to find out exactly what their role

    25 and implication was in these events.



  72. 1 Nevertheless, what can be said on Bratunac

    2 was that the version served by those who witnessed the

    3 events from the inside is that there was a fear that

    4 the town will be captured by all these prisoners who

    5 were inside Bratunac town. The alleged reason is that

    6 the town is empty of military forces, when we know a

    7 lot of forces are in this area. Therefore, the

    8 prisoners had to be guarded by old people carrying

    9 guns, and by children, and there was a threat that

    10 revenge would be taken on them. So that justified the

    11 need to evacuate the town.

    12 In reality, what happens in terms of

    13 evacuation is that the 14th, in the very early morning

    14 hours, indeed the first convoy of prisoners is leaving

    15 Bratunac town. That convoy does not take the asphalt

    16 road that goes towards Konjevic Polje, probably because

    17 of still some combat activities and the cleaning of the

    18 area going on at that moment, so the convoy took the

    19 road that goes north of Bratunac and then recaptures

    20 the road that goes towards Zvornik.

    21 That first group of prisoners was -- there

    22 was a promise of exchange which was done the day

    23 before, on the 12th, in the evening, by General Mladic,

    24 who went to visit some of these spots, and told to the

    25 prisoners that they had nothing to worry about and that



  73. 1 they will be later on exchanged.

    2 Indeed, this first group of prisoners

    3 believes that this is going to happen since they take

    4 the direction of Zvornik. They pass Zvornik. They

    5 arrive in Karakaj. At Karakaj they turn left, take the

    6 asphalt road that leads towards Tuzla, arrived at an

    7 intersection which is an intersection that leads to a

    8 village which at that time was completely destroyed,

    9 the village of Kriljevici, which is not marked on this

    10 map. They stop and they unload the buses. All the

    11 prisoners have to enter a school which is the Grbavci

    12 school, and during the day several convoys are coming

    13 from Bratunac and the prisoners are entering the gym of

    14 that school.

    15 At a later stage of the day, once the gym is

    16 full, General Mladic is witnessed coming to the school

    17 and gives a little speech to the prisoners. After his

    18 departure, the prisoners are taken out of the school,

    19 of the gymnasium of the school in little groups, loaded

    20 on a little TAM truck -- TAM is a trademark of the

    21 truck -- and taken very nearby to a field where an

    22 execution squad is waiting for them, and during all the

    23 afternoon of the 14th and part of the night of the

    24 14th, all the prisoners who were at the Grbavci

    25 gymnasium are executed at the site we call Orahovac.



  74. 1 That same day, the 14th July, at the same

    2 moment probably, other convoys of trucks and buses full

    3 of prisoners are leaving Bratunac town, taking the same

    4 direction towards Zvornik. They pass Karakaj, and they

    5 turn left towards a place called Petkovci where there

    6 is a school also. There is no gymnasium in that

    7 school. It is just a school building. The prisoners

    8 are put into classrooms. Once these classrooms are

    9 full -- we know for the first floor for sure because of

    10 survivors, but they believe that the ground floor was

    11 also full of prisoners.

    12 At the end of the afternoon, the prisoners

    13 are taken towards the Dam of Petkovci. We will give

    14 details about the location. The fact is that from the

    15 evening of the 14th, also through part of the night,

    16 group after group, an execution squad is waiting for

    17 the trucks bringing in the prisoners and all the

    18 prisoners are executed there. Luckily also, some

    19 managed to survive and will be able to tell you the

    20 story of what happened here.

    21 During that time, there are still prisoners

    22 in Bratunac. Prisoners who are in the old school are

    23 not evacuated before the 15th of July, despite all the

    24 allegations of officials in Bratunac who declared to us

    25 that the town was emptied in one day, the 14th of



  75. 1 July. We know it's not true. The 15th, some prisoners

    2 were still in the old school and evacuated that day

    3 towards Zvornik, going north, passing Kozluk, even more

    4 north. And just under the border of the Drina Corps

    5 which we saw on the previous map -- the border would be

    6 here -- they were brought to a school which is the

    7 Pilica school in a hamlet called Kula.

    8 They were jammed inside that school. We are

    9 suddenly talking here about a large number of people.

    10 When we will look into the details of this crime scene,

    11 you will see the size of that school. It's a big one

    12 which has also the gym and the classrooms. Obviously

    13 they were used to kill the prisoners.

    14 We believe that for the reason that during

    15 the night of the 15th to the 16th, one bus of prisoners

    16 came and the prisoners were not taken inside the

    17 school. They were executed outside the school. The

    18 probable reason for that is there was no space any more

    19 to keep them inside.

    20 The next day, the morning of the 16th, the

    21 people are taken out of the school and driven towards

    22 the Branjevo farm where an execution squad composed of

    23 members of the 10th Sabotage Detachment and members of

    24 another unit are waiting for them and execute them

    25 all. The other unit is the Bratunac Brigade. We'll



  76. 1 give details later on about the involvement of the

    2 Bratunac Brigade in the extermination of all the

    3 prisoners of the Branjevo farm.

    4 The key witness for this execution, aside the

    5 survivors, because here also are survivors, is Drazen

    6 Erdemovic, who will again testify about these events.

    7 After the execution at the Branjevo farm was

    8 finished, the same execution squad was tasked to go and

    9 kill prisoners who were inside the house of culture of

    10 Pilica. The commanding officer who instructed the

    11 squad to go and kill these people mentioned a number of

    12 500. We have no idea of how many people were inside,

    13 but this man seemed to know how many were in it.

    14 That same day, the 16th or the 17th, we

    15 cannot be very precise on this, we will explain later

    16 on why, we have knowledge also of another execution

    17 which took place in this area. We believe that the

    18 prisoners who were executed there were initially kept

    19 in a school called Orahovac. These prisoners were

    20 taken to Kozluk, and at the edge of the Drina River

    21 there was also an execution squad waiting for them in

    22 that location and the people were killed here. Our

    23 figure was 500 people killed here, which was indirect

    24 information. We will enter all these details also when

    25 we talk crime scene by crime scene, and we can confirm



  77. 1 indeed that number here.

    2 So this is roughly -- this is a summary of

    3 the chain of executions which happened after the

    4 takeover. What happened later on, but this also will

    5 be part of the separate demonstration, is that before

    6 the signature or even -- at the moment, the Bosnian

    7 Serb Army realised that the war was going to be ended

    8 and not necessarily the way they expected but through

    9 an agreement, the decision was made to try to erase the

    10 evidence of the crime committed.

    11 It was already clear that there would be an

    12 investigation on this. Journalists had already started

    13 to investigate the place. Some even had tried to enter

    14 and have entered the area. So there was no doubt in

    15 their mind that there would be a full investigation on

    16 such events.

    17 Therefore, the decision was made to erase all

    18 the evidence from the mass graves and transfer the

    19 bodies in hidden locations, which was indeed done, and

    20 all the triangles mark the positions of individual

    21 graves, each of them having a content between 80 and

    22 180 bodies in them. These areas are scattered mainly

    23 in the south-west of Zvornik and at the south of the

    24 Srebrenica enclave.

    25 We'll give details later on about how the



  78. 1 secondary sites connect with what we call the primary

    2 sites.

    3 I think at this stage, that's what we have to

    4 say.

    5 Q. Have a seat please, Mr. Ruez.

    6 MR. HARMON: Just to inform Your Honours, I

    7 intend to call Mr. Ruez back later, at a different

    8 stage of the trial, to explain these additional aspects

    9 of this, particularly the secondary grave sites.

    10 Q. But let me turn now, Mr. Ruez, to a film

    11 which I would like you, first of all, to inform the

    12 Judges in advance what's on this film, what it shows,

    13 where it was acquired, who filmed it. Could you do

    14 that, please, and just give a brief summary, and then

    15 during the showing of this film, I'd like you to

    16 narrate the various aspects.

    17 A. Yes. The film we're going to see is going to

    18 show several aspects of the operation at the time it

    19 was happening. We will see people from Srebrenica

    20 leaving Srebrenica town on one piece of that footage.

    21 The footage is coming from a journalist named Zoran

    22 Petrovic. He was present in the enclave at the time of

    23 the events. He was obviously in agreement with the

    24 Bosnian Serb Army to be there, since he's driving in a

    25 military vehicle and is constantly in the presence of



  79. 1 Bosnian Serb military personnel.

    2 The fact is that in the film, it doesn't make

    3 that very clear, since some people ask him questions

    4 about his presence once he presents himself as an

    5 independent journalist of Studio B in Belgrade. At

    6 another moment, he presents himself like the police.

    7 The fact is that he was there and could film quite a

    8 lot of interesting sequences. He didn't do that in the

    9 purpose of assisting the Tribunal, that's clear, but

    10 nevertheless, he sold bits of his film later on to

    11 international press journalists.

    12 Before doing that, he edited his film in

    13 order to make sure we would not get access to pictures

    14 that would implicate too heavily the Bosnian Serb

    15 Army. So there are some blank spots in this film. One

    16 journalist could see the entire version of it. The

    17 missing parts are not extremely relevant, in fact.

    18 They don't show murders. They don't show a lot of dead

    19 bodies, but they show prisoners, as an example, but we

    20 will come on it later, in the White House of Potocari.

    21 He initially had a sequence showing men sitting on the

    22 balcony, which is, in fact, also interesting, because

    23 it shows that the house was indeed really packed with

    24 people, but that sequence was erased in his film.

    25 Nevertheless, the film has been extremely



  80. 1 useful for the investigation, both for -- to have a

    2 better view of the events but also to identify a

    3 certain number of very interesting individuals.

    4 Also, this film implements some parts of the

    5 stories told by the witnesses, which no one would ever

    6 have a chance to implement without live pictures at the

    7 time of the events. The film shows, as an example, a

    8 Bosnian Serb soldier on the asphalt road between Lolici

    9 and Sandici, wearing a blue helmet. This -- we would

    10 not have been able to confirm that without this film.

    11 In the footage we're going to see, in fact,

    12 is a mixture of footage, as there are -- also part of

    13 it are extracts of news from RS television. In fact, I

    14 discover a bit the synopsis of the tape at the moment

    15 I'm talking about it.

    16 So we will see refugees leaving the enclave.

    17 Then we will also see Serb forces entering Srebrenica.

    18 We will see Milan Jojovic, who is the commander of a

    19 special force unit the Drina Wolves, which is -- in

    20 fact at that time was a unit part of the 1st Zvornik

    21 Brigade, giving some instructions to his troops.

    22 We can see also General Mladic, General

    23 Krstic, General Zivanovic entering Srebrenica town.

    24 The piece of footage showing the speech of General

    25 Mladic, which is not translated on the tape but I



  81. 1 assume you will be provided later with a full

    2 transcript of the tape where General Mladic talks about

    3 the fact that it is now time to take revenge on the

    4 Turks, which is the name a certain number of Bosnian

    5 Serbs used to designate Muslims.

    6 We will also see films on Potocari, of

    7 refugees, of women arriving, of General Mladic talking

    8 with these refugees and giving them some reassurances,

    9 General Mladic giving an interview also which is not

    10 translated on the footage you will see. I will make

    11 some comments probably at the moment the film is

    12 rolling. And various views of Potocari, which will be

    13 interesting, but I think I better make the comments at

    14 the moment the film is unfolding.

    15 After Potocari, part of the film will be

    16 extracts of Zoran Petrovic's videotape, and these will

    17 be pictures of military activities going on in between

    18 Bratunac and Konjevic Polje. At some points, but we'll

    19 return later on on this when we will be talking crime

    20 scene by crime scene, we will return to these pictures

    21 because for some of them we can identify very precisely

    22 the location, and this is an identification we have

    23 made very recently and we will expose it to you.

    24 Then it will show Srebrenica town, which is

    25 also an interesting thing for us to have since you will



  82. 1 see on this film how the mosque in Srebrenica, the main

    2 mosque of Srebrenica looks like at the moment it was --

    3 the place was captured by the Bosnian Serb army, and I

    4 will then show you photographs of that same mosque in

    5 1996, 1997, and in 1998, and you will see the slow

    6 destruction of that building until it is transformed

    7 into a parking lot.

    8 Then you will have a little piece of footage

    9 which is undated, where we can see refugees arriving in

    10 Kladanj, and finally the film will end with a piece of

    11 footage of BiH television news, which is the arrival of

    12 the first military men coming out at the area of Nezuk,

    13 where the members of the 28th Division, which was the

    14 Muslim division inside the Srebrenica enclave, managed

    15 to exit that part of the territory.

    16 Q. Now, Mr. Ruez, as we roll the film, if you

    17 want to make comments to inform the Judges about what's

    18 being seen in the images, please feel free to do so.

    19 If we could dim the lights, and if we could start the

    20 video, it's Prosecutor's Exhibit number 3.

    21 [Videotape played]

    22 A. That was the UN compound in Srebrenica called

    23 Company B. At this moment, the people ...

    24 THE INTERPRETER: The interpreters are sorry,

    25 but this cannot be interpreted. It needs to be stopped



  83. 1 for the interpreters to hear the comments.

    2 A. Do you have the sound when the film is

    3 ongoing?

    4 MR. HARMON:

    5 Q. Could you rewind the film please. Keep the

    6 volume down, and we'll start again.

    7 A. The first sequence in black and white is, in

    8 fact, a moment of panic in Srebrenica town where the

    9 population realises the enclave is going to fall, and

    10 the men are discussing what to do. And this is, in

    11 fact, the key moment where massively the decision to

    12 flee either towards Potocari, either towards the woods

    13 and try to find a way to exfiltrate the area.

    14 Very shortly, in fact, after that, or even

    15 before that, the crowd was entering the UN compound,

    16 and General Mladic, the day before, had threatened the

    17 United Nations that no refugees should be accepted

    18 inside the compound. If not, the compound would be

    19 shelled. It is hard to say if what happened next is an

    20 on-purpose act or "an accident," but the fact is a

    21 mortar shell hit in the middle of that crowd, and an

    22 unknown number of people were killed and injured at

    23 that moment.

    24 Q. Mr. Ruez, was this film taken by Zoran

    25 Petrovic, or is this additional film footage that's



  84. 1 been inserted in this exhibit?

    2 A. This is an additional insertion. We would

    3 have to double-check where it's coming from exactly. I

    4 think it's either coming from a Bosniak Muslim video

    5 footage or Dutch footage.

    6 Q. All right. Now if we could proceed with the

    7 film, and proceed to make your comments, Mr. Ruez, as

    8 we progress.

    9 [Videotape played]

    10 A. The building here is Company B in Srebrenica

    11 town. This is a crowd which is at the UN compound.

    12 Nearby, they are trying to decide what course of action

    13 to take. At that moment, everyone knew it was already

    14 lost.

    15 These are the first refugees arriving at the

    16 UN base. The first ones will arrive in trucks and

    17 buses. The United Nations personnel, they are trying

    18 their best to go and collect as many people as

    19 possible. But the main column arrived walking. Some

    20 shelling was happening on the way, but not targeting

    21 the population; in fact, channelling the population

    22 towards Srebrenica. Several were wounded by the

    23 shelling, but the shelling was not designed to kill the

    24 people, but to make sure that they would go like

    25 organised cattle towards Potocari.



  85. 1 This is the commander of the Drina Wolves

    2 giving instructions to his troops to yell like wolves

    3 in order to scare off probably the opponent.

    4 This is the area south of the enclave at the

    5 moment the military operation is going on. Probably --

    6 the people we just saw were probably in the vicinity of

    7 the forward command post of Krivaca, which is a hill

    8 just east of Srebrenica town, south-east of Srebrenica

    9 town, which enables us to have an overview of this

    10 area.

    11 Here you can see the Drina Wolves yelling.

    12 This is a picture of a tank. This is

    13 probably the Republika Srpska news.

    14 This is General Mladic entering Srebrenica

    15 town, greeting individuals wearing black camouflage

    16 uniforms, which are members of the 10th Sabotage

    17 Detachment. We know several of them by name. He's

    18 calling General Krstic and General Zivanovic, asking

    19 them to speed up. Greeting here, you can see members

    20 of the unit of the Drina Wolves. They have this

    21 armband with a blue patch with a black wolf yelling in

    22 it.

    23 You have here various people, including the

    24 brother of General Zivanovic. The identification of

    25 faces and names might come at a later stage, when we



  86. 1 will discuss, in detail, the responsibilities. When he

    2 says "Krle," he refers to General Krstic.

    3 An element of the 2nd Romanija Corps, which

    4 was also a unit which participated in the takeover of

    5 the enclave. Here we can see General Krstic greeting

    6 his colleague from the 2nd Romanija Corps. You can see

    7 several people of top interest; we will discuss them

    8 later.

    9 This is the piece of footage where General

    10 Mladic ends by saying that the time of revenge on the

    11 Turks has arrived.

    12 This is a group of Bratunac Brigade people

    13 from the reconnaissance unit who are entering

    14 Srebrenica -- Potocari first. Bosnian Serb forces in

    15 Potocari, next to the White House. Behind it is an

    16 electrical substation. The people are coming from a

    17 hamlet above. They are directed towards the asphalt

    18 road.

    19 This is a view of a crowd of refugees in

    20 Potocari next to the Express Compound. General Mladic

    21 explaining to the crowd what is going to happen, that

    22 the woman, the children, and the elderly are going to

    23 be evacuated first, that the turn of the men will come

    24 after that part of the evacuation will be completed,

    25 that no one will harm them. The very precise location



  87. 1 of that footage is known. I'll show you later on

    2 pictures of that location. There are ground features

    3 which are easily recognisable.

    4 You can see the person wearing the blue flak

    5 jacket, this is Major Kingori, a United Nations

    6 military observer who was present there and who has a

    7 lot of interesting details to give.

    8 In this interview, General Mladic is just

    9 giving technical comments regarding the ongoing

    10 operation, what is going to happen; all the good things

    11 that he is currently doing for these people, providing

    12 them with water and food. I believe this is also the

    13 footage where he explains that the operation is not

    14 directed against UNPROFOR, nor the civilian population,

    15 but only against army people. The men surrounding

    16 Mladic are his bodyguards. You will constantly see

    17 them in his presence. In every footage where General

    18 Mladic appears, you will see them. They are his

    19 bodyguards.

    20 This is the separation line which is nearby

    21 the Express Compound, just in the area where General

    22 Mladic was just giving his interview. At this moment,

    23 this is a little piece of propaganda where the soldiers

    24 are handing, for the sake of the RS television,

    25 chocolate and bonbons to the children.



  88. 1 This is a view of the refugees waiting for

    2 the buses in the vicinity of the Express Compound, just

    3 at the location where General Mladic was talking.

    4 These are the faces of men in that little compound.

    5 The men will all be separated and taken to what we call

    6 the White House.

    7 This is a view of the Express Compound, one

    8 of the factories in Potocari where the refugees were

    9 jammed inside, waiting for a chance to flee that place,

    10 and we will explain why they needed to flee.

    11 This is a scene where the people are cleared

    12 to go on board the buses. Soldiers in the vicinity of

    13 the buses. All these buses are coming from all over

    14 the area. There was even an appeal to the public to

    15 provide transportation.

    16 All these men are men who were in the White

    17 House and who are going to take separate buses. You

    18 will see at one point individuals who try to go on the

    19 other side are prevented by soldiers in between the

    20 truck to reach the other side of that road. All these

    21 men have been identified by face, and they are all

    22 missing. Someone will come and testify about this

    23 identification.

    24 This is the other part where the women, the

    25 children, and the elderly could walk and go in buses



  89. 1 which were going towards Kladanj. Men were shipped

    2 towards Bratunac.

    3 You can see some men are still on that part

    4 of the road. This means that these men logically will

    5 be able to get on board of the bus, but several of them

    6 will probably be separated on the way before Kladanj,

    7 except the very old ones or the really disabled ones.

    8 People know each other, as you can see.

    9 This is a discussion between a UN soldier and

    10 the commander of special police forces in charge of

    11 organising the process here. You can see a lot of

    12 clothing lying on the ground. People had to abandon

    13 their bags, their belongings, before entering the

    14 buses. All the way towards Kladanj, they will be

    15 systematically robbed of all their belongings also.

    16 This is Major Kingori at this moment

    17 complaining about the situation inside the White

    18 House. He says that the men are sitting on top of each

    19 other, and that this is no good, no good. General

    20 Mladic visited, indeed, the White House also.

    21 These are belongings of the men who were

    22 forced into that White House.

    23 That scene is filmed on the meadow of

    24 Sandici. At this moment, this man is forced to shout

    25 the name of his son who is somewhere in the woods and



  90. 1 bring him to surrender.

    2 These are soldiers who are guarding the

    3 prisoners, and this is most probably also at the meadow

    4 of Sandici, since there is no break in the footage.

    5 Not "most probably," it is most certainly the meadow of

    6 Sandici. The man who is playing with the gun of this

    7 soldier is an alleged legal officer.

    8 This is a group of prisoners arriving on the

    9 meadow. These are the hills which are south of the

    10 asphalt road of Bratunac-Konjevici. They were shooting

    11 on the column with anti-aircraft weapons. The shells

    12 explode when they hit the trees and then they throw

    13 shrapnel on all those beyond it. It is totally

    14 forbidden to use these kinds of weapons on personnel.

    15 It has been a common practice throughout the war to use

    16 these weapons on them, that is, anti-personnel guns.

    17 This is the road coming from the direction of

    18 Konjevici, towards Sandici. Sandici is in the hill

    19 just after this stretch of road; behind the hill is

    20 Sandici. You can see abandoned clothing at the edge of

    21 the road. People were surrendering, sometimes one

    22 individual, sometimes two, three, but the main

    23 surrenderings were massive. Soldiers were lined up all

    24 along this stretch of road.

    25 You can see soldiers all along that stretch



  91. 1 of road here again. They're waiting for prisoners to

    2 surrender.

    3 In this piece of interview -- you will also,

    4 I assume, get a full translation of it -- the soldier

    5 is explaining that today they have captured between

    6 3.000 and 4.000 prisoners in this location. The

    7 journalist asks him, "This is exaggerated," but meaning

    8 that this is a lot, and the soldier replies, "Yes.

    9 Yes, this is a lot."

    10 Here you can see the Bosnian Serb soldier

    11 next to the alleged legal officer wearing a blue

    12 helmet.

    13 This is at Sandici meadow. Prisoners

    14 arriving from the forest. I mean, at that moment, they

    15 become prisoners. This man has a bloodstain on his

    16 backpack. This man is asked by the journalist, why is

    17 he afraid, and he explains, who would not be? In this

    18 picture, there is a dead body lying nearby, and the

    19 fact is that at this point, there was no reason to have

    20 dead bodies lying on the ground. There is some

    21 propaganda saying that some persons who were arriving

    22 on the asphalt road, in fact, were willing to pick

    23 fights with the people guarding them, but that doesn't

    24 seem very serious. Here is the dead body.

    25 Still the Sandici -- the arrival towards



  92. 1 Sandici. Most of the soldiers stripped themselves of

    2 military clothing, not to be identified as soldiers.

    3 This one is forced to take off his T-shirt. But in the

    4 end, they will all be treated the same way, whatever

    5 kind of clothing they were wearing.

    6 The soldiers are directing the prisoners

    7 towards the meadow at this moment.

    8 This is the arrival towards the meadow,

    9 trying to take this wounded toward the meadow. The

    10 wounded will then be put in some destroyed houses, and

    11 no one knows what will be their fate.

    12 This is a view of the hills nearby the

    13 asphalt road.

    14 This is Srebrenica town. The town is empty.

    15 There is a car passing by with an individual flashing

    16 the Serb victory sign. Zoran Petrovic filming dead

    17 bodies in Srebrenica town. We don't know how these

    18 people died, if they died because of shelling or if

    19 they were executed there.

    20 This is a view of the mosque as it was when

    21 the enclave was taken by the Serb forces, filmed by

    22 Zoran Petrovic.

    23 These are women, children, and also some men

    24 arriving at the canyon in Kladanj. This is on

    25 Muslim-held territory at that time. We do not know if



  93. 1 this was filmed on the 12th or the 13th.

    2 This is the arrival of members of the 28th

    3 Division who managed to break the lines at Nezuk. As

    4 you can see, they carry their weapons. It's an

    5 absolute fact that the enclave was not demilitarised.

    6 But only the first part of the column was organised and

    7 properly equipped. Some weapons were among those in

    8 the huge crowd left behind, but only hunting rifles,

    9 old rifles.

    10 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Mr. Harmon,

    11 I think this is a convenient time to make a break.

    12 MR. HARMON: Yes.

    13 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Would you

    14 agree?

    15 MR. HARMON: Yes.

    16 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Very well.

    17 We shall now make then a 20-minute break.

    18 --- Recess taken at 12.54 p.m.

    19 --- On resuming at 1.18 p.m.

    20 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Mr. Harmon,

    21 you may continue.

    22 MR. HARMON: Mr. President, let me just

    23 briefly summarise the manner which Mr. Ruez will be

    24 testifying now. We have prepared Volume 1 of the

    25 Office of the Prosecutor exhibits. They have been



  94. 1 premarked. You should have copies of those, I hope,

    2 before you or you will have them shortly. What I

    3 propose to do is ask Mr. Ruez to proceed by each of the

    4 subparts of this exhibit. He will enter more into the

    5 details of this particular series of events.

    6 Q. Mr. Ruez, what I'd like you to do now is

    7 enter more into the details of the various locations

    8 that you have been discussing in your broad overview of

    9 the events that took place following the fall of

    10 Srebrenica.

    11 I have before me and you should have in front

    12 of you Prosecutor's Exhibit 4, and it is divided into

    13 subparts. The subparts specify specific locations.

    14 What I would like you to do, first of all, is to begin

    15 with this exhibit, the first tabbed item which is

    16 Srebrenica, and I'd like you to enter into the details

    17 of that.

    18 I'm going to start my examination by

    19 tendering a film, and I'd like you to inform the Judges

    20 what the film will show them first. Will you do that?

    21 Then I'll ask you to put on a map.

    22 A. Sure. The map first, the video second.

    23 First of all, the map of the area of Srebrenica. If it

    24 does work on the ELMO -- do I have to press something?

    25 Q. It will take care of itself. You're fine.



  95. 1 A. Okay. Sorry.

    2 MR. HARMON: Okay. Now, for the video booth,

    3 we're going to be playing Prosecutor's Exhibit 4/8.

    4 Q. Could you, before we play that, Mr. Ruez,

    5 could you please explain to the Judges what it is that

    6 they will be seeing on the video?

    7 A. Yes. The video will be views from Srebrenica

    8 town, filmed by myself, but before -- and which will

    9 show Srebrenica town from the air first, and then it

    10 will show Srebrenica town from the road. The aim of

    11 showing you these pictures is mainly to give you a

    12 feeling of the ground, how the place looks like. The

    13 terrain is changing in this area significantly every

    14 30 kilometres. The south of Srebrenica is very hilly,

    15 mountainous; the north is entering a plain. So it is

    16 important for the good comprehension of the military

    17 operation also to know how the ground looks like. The

    18 military operation will be developed later by someone

    19 else, but this will already give you a feeling of how

    20 the area is.

    21 You will also be able then to review these

    22 pictures and identify precise locations where the

    23 perpetrators can be seen.

    24 First of all, I start with the Exhibit

    25 number 4/A, which is the map of the area. On the map



  96. 1 one can already read the ground through the markings

    2 but the video will be much better for this.

    3 Another element of importance on this map is

    4 a little place that you can find just south-east of

    5 Srebrenica town. I'm going to circle it on the

    6 exhibit. It's Pribicevac. Pribicevac is the location

    7 of the forward command post which was set there for the

    8 sake of the command and control of the military

    9 operation of the takeover of the enclave.

    10 Initially, the operation was not designed to

    11 take over the enclave but to shrink it to the limits of

    12 the town in a way to create a big open-air refugee

    13 centre which would then lead to the decision by the

    14 UN to evacuate the area. It is only the 11th that the

    15 Bosnian Serb army realised that there would be no

    16 opponents to challenge their advance towards the town,

    17 that General Mladic made the decision to capture the

    18 entire enclave, and this is the location from which the

    19 operations were directed.

    20 We can now have a look at the film. Also one

    21 important detail is to see the distance between

    22 Srebrenica and Bratunac, which is a short distance as

    23 you can see it on the map.

    24 Q. All right. Could the audio booth please

    25 start the film.



  97. 1 [Audiotape played]

    2 A. This is the access to Srebrenica to the south

    3 of the road. You can see here the road that is at the

    4 south of the map. It's on top of a hill, and it will

    5 then go down to Srebrenica. This is the road that the

    6 Bosnian Serb army took before entering the town and

    7 after capturing the observation posts south of the

    8 enclave. So here you can see what the ground looks

    9 like. It's a very hilly zone.

    10 The area you can see in front, these

    11 succession of hills, it's the same landscape between

    12 Srebrenica and the intersection of Konjevici. All the

    13 ground looks the same. It's a succession of huge

    14 hills. This is the town sandwiched in between two

    15 hills, and from Pribicevac, one can overlook the town.

    16 This is approaching towards the centre of

    17 town. In the middle of the picture here you don't see

    18 any more the location of the mosque. This film is

    19 dated August 1999. I filmed it from a helicopter.

    20 Here you can zoom-in on what is now a parking lot. I

    21 will show you still pictures after this film. There

    22 was then the Orthodox church. I will show it to you on

    23 photographs.

    24 This is a soccer field. The concrete

    25 playground here is a soccer field. There are two



  98. 1 soccer fields in the town, one for which we have a

    2 still photograph, and other one for which we don't

    3 have.

    4 This is the UN compound for Company B in

    5 Srebrenica town. This is the second soccer field. The

    6 soccer fields are important because, as Drazen

    7 Erdemovic testified, the population which was left

    8 inside the town was then directed towards the soccer

    9 field. We have not determined with him what soccer

    10 field. The fact is, anyhow, that we don't know what is

    11 the fate of these people who were then taken to this

    12 soccer field.

    13 This is the road coming from Potocari towards

    14 Srebrenica, and we are just at this moment passing this

    15 soccer field which is the most south of Srebrenica

    16 town. This is filming the west part of that area.

    17 We are going right now from this soccer field

    18 towards the centre of town. This lasts approximately,

    19 I would say, three to five minutes.

    20 The video is filmed by a colleague from the

    21 Office of the Prosecutor, Peter Nicholson. This film

    22 is dated -- this one is dated April 1996. So nine

    23 months after the takeover.

    24 Most of the hills are deforested. The reason

    25 is that the only heating source inside the enclave



  99. 1 since, in fact, 1992, before even the enclave existed,

    2 was wood. That's why all the hills look so naked.

    3 This is the Company B, the UN compound of

    4 Srebrenica. The guardhouse of the entrance. The

    5 location has obviously been transformed at that moment

    6 into a depot of trash. The town needed a severe

    7 cleaning for all these years and, in fact, the

    8 municipality was very busy and active cleaning the town

    9 still at that moment.

    10 The quality of the film is not excellent.

    11 It's super -- it's an 8-millimetre video camera, basic

    12 device, so there is no steady shot on the picture.

    13 This is the reason why the picture moves so often.

    14 One thing one can note also, not necessarily

    15 on these pictures, but we could have others that can

    16 demonstrate it, the place had been subject to quite

    17 intense shelling from time to time, but the fact is

    18 that the destructions are not extremely obvious. Most

    19 of the buildings are standing. Many have shrapnel

    20 traces, but it is not a destroyed area. The situation

    21 reports number the number of shells at some point

    22 during the attack up to 200 a day. There was intense

    23 shelling going on, but the result of it is not so

    24 obvious.

    25 This is an area where General Mladic was



  100. 1 sighted on film, a film by RS television. We did not

    2 show this footage in the film that we previously

    3 showed, but this is the south-west part where we can

    4 sight General Mladic, the 11th of July.

    5 THE INTERPRETER: Could the sound volume of

    6 the film be put down, please?

    7 A. [Previous translation continues] ... from the

    8 10th Sabotage Detachment. This is entering the centre

    9 of Srebrenica. The buildings on the right was made

    10 famous when General Morillon raised the UN flag on top

    11 of it. I'm not sure if it's this one or the one next

    12 to it.

    13 This place here was the area where the red

    14 vehicle was passing in the Zoran Petrovic video. This

    15 is leading to the marketplace where the main mosque of

    16 Srebrenica was standing in the Zoran Petrovic video.

    17 This is, as I said, footage dated April 1996. You will

    18 see that the minaret of the mosque and the dome of the

    19 mosque have been dynamited.

    20 This road leads now to Zeleni Jadar. We are

    21 still in Srebrenica town going to Zeleni Jadar, which

    22 is south of Srebrenica. It is an area where we will

    23 later talk about secondary mass grave sites. It is

    24 still a pile of trash and rubble in the town. As I

    25 said, the cleaning process of the garbage was not over



  101. 1 at that time.

    2 This is an area where Drazen Erdemovic put on

    3 fire a haystack to mark a position, a position of their

    4 advance. The ones who entered the enclave were the

    5 10th Sabotage Detachment and Drina Wolves. Both of

    6 them can be seen on pieces of footage that we have

    7 available.

    8 This is driving towards Zeleni Jadar,

    9 overlooking the town. This is exactly the view that

    10 the Bosnian Serb army had when they arrived towards

    11 Srebrenica by road.

    12 MR. HARMON:

    13 Q. Mr. Ruez, if you'd now proceed using the

    14 still photographs that are located in Prosecutor's

    15 Exhibit 4. Would you kindly put them on the ELMO and

    16 explain to the Judges what they represent. Will you

    17 move it up a little, please? That's fine. Thank you

    18 very much.

    19 A. So this is -- this is a photograph from the

    20 part of the road that we have just seen, but this is a

    21 photo, not an extract from the film. It shows just the

    22 town and how it is blocked in between those two hills.

    23 No, sorry. There is one important detail on

    24 this one. This is so far the only photograph we have

    25 of the concrete playground. You can see in the centre



  102. 1 of the picture a group of white buildings, and just at

    2 the left of these white buildings, behind them is an

    3 area of concrete. This is the playground number 1,

    4 let's call them like this, of Srebrenica town.

    5 Exhibit number 4/2 is, for reference, a

    6 photograph of the UN compound of Srebrenica town, the

    7 Company B compound. This is the place where the crowd

    8 of people was assembled at the beginning of the film

    9 that we showed as Exhibit number 3.

    10 Q. Is this the location that was shelled and

    11 Muslim refugees were killed and injured?

    12 A. Yes, definitely this is the place.

    13 Q. Please proceed.

    14 A. The Exhibit 4/3 is a photograph of the

    15 destroyed mosque, which I took in April 1993. No,

    16 sorry. This photograph is one dated January 1996.

    17 January 1996. It was the first mission we did and

    18 where we were unable to enter Republika Srpska in

    19 company of Under-Secretary of State John Shattuck at

    20 the time. We could visit a few of these locations and

    21 have a brief entering of Srebrenica town. This

    22 photograph is January 1996.

    23 Q. Now, Mr. Ruez, earlier in the Petrovic film

    24 that we saw, we saw a mosque that was standing up. Is

    25 this the same mosque?



  103. 1 A. This is exactly the same mosque. The only

    2 changes on this one is that as you can see here, that

    3 part is the minaret, and the dome which was on top of

    4 the mosque is now destroyed also. These destructions

    5 are most probably caused by dynamite.

    6 Exhibit 4/4, on this exhibit you can see a

    7 view from the main mosque of Srebrenica, in the middle

    8 of the picture, and its environment. One detail you

    9 can note on this one is that there is also another

    10 religious monument in the frame of the picture, which

    11 is the Orthodox church.

    12 Q. When was this picture taken?

    13 A. This picture is dated April 1996. We have

    14 never visited the inside of the Orthodox church, but

    15 you have to know that during a certain number of years,

    16 propaganda claimed that the Orthodox church had been

    17 destroyed by the Bosniak Muslims who were inside of the

    18 enclave. After the fact, photographs were shown now

    19 with the claim that it was not destroyed from the

    20 outside, but destroyed from the inside. We never went

    21 to check. The only thing we can show is this

    22 photograph that shows that the church is standing.

    23 This is another photograph, but dated 1997.

    24 The difference with the photograph dated 1996 is that

    25 you do not have any more the minaret and you do not



  104. 1 have any more the dome on top of this rubble.

    2 Exhibit 46 is still extracted from the video

    3 that I filmed from a helicopter in August 1999, and

    4 which was shown to you at the beginning of the film on

    5 Srebrenica. On this one, you can see at the precise

    6 location where the mosque was standing now is a

    7 concrete ground, and vehicles are parked here

    8 [indicates]. This has now been transformed into a

    9 parking lot.

    10 The next exhibit, Exhibit 47, is a view of

    11 another mosque in Srebrenica, which is on the way going

    12 to Zeleni Jadar, so very south of the town. This

    13 picture is dated April 1996. In January, we didn't go

    14 so far, so we don't know how it was in January, but in

    15 April 1996, at the moment the central mosque of the

    16 marketplace was dynamited, we can see that this one has

    17 suffered the same treatment as the main mosque. We

    18 have no other pictures of this one, we just monitored

    19 the destruction of the main mosque, but this one now is

    20 exactly in the same state as the main one. It doesn't

    21 exist anymore.

    22 These are the exhibits I wanted to show you

    23 about Srebrenica town.

    24 Q. Mr. Ruez, is there any other detail you'd

    25 like to relate to the Court before we turn to Exhibit



  105. 1 5, which is Potocari?

    2 A. No. The investigation does not focus on

    3 Srebrenica town, since the only elements we know about

    4 the situation at that time, in that place, is that

    5 people were still there. According to Drazen

    6 Erdemovic, the people who were found in Srebrenica town

    7 were directed to the soccer field, but he never went to

    8 the soccer field so he doesn't know what was the

    9 situation there. He describes one murder committed in

    10 Srebrenica, which was filmed by those who committed it,

    11 but we never could access that footage.

    12 For the rest, in fact, the only elements we

    13 have are the destructions of the mosques. And it's not

    14 a full survey, we only have photographs on two

    15 mosques. As far as I know, there were four mosques,

    16 and maybe even five mosques in Srebrenica.

    17 Q. All right. Mr. Ruez, let's turn our

    18 attention now to Potocari. Would you inform the Judges

    19 of the additional details about Potocari?

    20 A. This is Exhibit 5A, which is, in fact, a

    21 black and white photocopy of a map. That map does not

    22 show all the buildings in Potocari, but the main ones.

    23 I will show you other products which will enable you to

    24 get familiar with the various factories.

    25 The important element in Potocari is that



  106. 1 when all the refugees came from all the parts of the

    2 enclave towards Potocari, there was not enough space to

    3 accommodate them, and when I say "accommodate," to give

    4 some kind of shelter to them. So they entered these

    5 factories, and the factories were completely crowded

    6 and packed with refugees. Also, the surroundings were

    7 occupied, houses were occupied, and a lot of criminal

    8 events are described by the witnesses in Potocari. All

    9 of them -- most of them we have only to stand on the

    10 declarations of the witnesses because we have no

    11 ability to conduct any forensics in that place.

    12 Most of the criminal events that the

    13 witnesses describe are happening in the vicinity of the

    14 factories, people taken by soldiers and led towards

    15 hidden directions, and also in little groups of houses

    16 which are in the vicinity.

    17 One important element about what happened in

    18 Potocari is that it was not -- it is not what we could

    19 really call an execution area. In fact, murders were

    20 committed there. Obviously, there was a kind of free

    21 possibility for either the soldiers or locals from

    22 Bratunac to come to the place and behave in the way,

    23 more or less, they wanted to behave. So it's a very

    24 confused situation.

    25 A lot of murders are reported. Bodies were



  107. 1 left in the open, near water pumps, which is important

    2 information, because these bodies were not hidden, and

    3 we suppose that this was done on purpose. The reason

    4 is that after the night spent in these factories, the

    5 main concern the next morning was to try to find water,

    6 so the women went to find water pumps in the vicinity,

    7 and you will hear many reports about dead bodies lying

    8 nearby water pumps.

    9 This situation has to be put in correlation

    10 with the official declarations of General Mladic and

    11 other officials, which is that the population was given

    12 a free choice either to stay under the protection of

    13 the army of the Republika Srpska and the police of

    14 Republika Srpska, and those who have committed no

    15 crimes have nothing to fear; either to leave, to leave

    16 either towards Muslim-held territory or towards the

    17 territory of the Federal Republic, towards Serbia; or

    18 even to go to a country of their choice, adding that

    19 there was no possibility to meet personal requirements

    20 but that that option was even open.

    21 The reality behind that alleged choice is

    22 that what happened in Potocari was designed not to

    23 exterminate the people, but to infiltrate enough terror

    24 to force them to flee the place, and you will see here

    25 that all the people there, indeed, were very eager to



  108. 1 get on a bus and get out of this place, where they knew

    2 that they would be killed at one moment or another by

    3 staying too long. But I am not going to develop on

    4 what the witnesses will tell you in this courtroom.

    5 Q. Mr. Ruez, before you move the map, can you

    6 tell the Judges the approximate distance between

    7 Srebrenica and Potocari?

    8 A. Yes. As you can see, the distance from

    9 Srebrenica to Potocari is five kilometres on the map,

    10 roughly four to five kilometres. Then the distance

    11 between Potocari and Bratunac is approximately three

    12 kilometres. All these are short distances.

    13 Q. And these squares in the map represent

    14 one-kilometre square; is that correct?

    15 A. This is absolutely correct, yes.

    16 Q. Please proceed, Mr. Ruez.

    17 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Mr. Harmon,

    18 sorry to interrupt you, but before we turn to the

    19 following issue, I would like to know why we are

    20 talking about Potocari, whereas the encircled place is

    21 called Pecista.

    22 A. The reason is everyone calls this location

    23 where the factories are, everyone calls this place

    24 Potocari. The reality is that the little hamlet of

    25 Potocari, I'm going to check in the map if it is even



  109. 1 written on it -- yes, the little hamlet is written on

    2 it, but it is not the area of the building. The area

    3 where the main factories are has no name.

    4 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Thank you.

    5 MR. HARMON:

    6 Q. Please continue, Mr. Ruez. Please explain

    7 what this photograph is, if you will.

    8 A. Exhibit 51 is an aerial photograph from

    9 Potocari, from the area where all the factories are.

    10 This photograph is a product of the US government. All

    11 the photographs which will be coming from that source,

    12 which is, in fact, the State Department, which delivers

    13 these products to us, will have white markings on

    14 them. You will see later that on these same products,

    15 yellow markers are added. All the yellow markings are

    16 coming from myself; all that is white is the

    17 information provided by the US government. This

    18 photograph is dated 13 July 1995. One thing that we

    19 won't discuss also is the platform that took the

    20 picture, on which we have no information.

    21 Here you can see a group of buildings

    22 which -- this won't be very meaningful, which is the

    23 reason why I'm going immediately to pass to the next

    24 exhibit, which is 52, which has markings on it.

    25 Q. Mr. Ruez, as you identify these particular



  110. 1 locations, can you tell us very briefly what happened

    2 in each of these locations and what the significance of

    3 these buildings are?

    4 A. So we are going to start with the UN base.

    5 The goal of this presentation is also, indeed, to get

    6 familiarised with the various buildings here. In fact,

    7 there are not so many important buildings that the

    8 people refer to. The main one, naturally, is the UN

    9 base. It is circled and squared in yellow, in a yellow

    10 frame. All this area is the area of what everyone

    11 refers to also as the Akumulator Factory, which is a

    12 former battery factory for ships, and maybe other

    13 devices. But it is, in fact, the UN base.

    14 In this compound, about 5.000 refugees

    15 managed to find shelter on the 11th. Despite Mladic's

    16 instruction, order, not to accept any refugees inside

    17 the compound, Dutch officers decided to open a fence in

    18 a little hidden part of that compound so that refugees

    19 could get in, and 5.000 of them could enter.

    20 Unfortunately, at some point, the factory was full of

    21 people and the order came out not to accept any more

    22 refugees inside of it. So once this factory was

    23 totally filled in with refugees, other factories

    24 started to get occupied.

    25 The Blue Factory is not referred to by people



  111. 1 for the simple reason that as soon as the Bosnian Serb

    2 army arrived in the location, they took possession of

    3 this factory and they taped around it; no one could

    4 approach. We don't know what happened inside, no one

    5 is in a position to tell us at this point, but no

    6 refugees was inside this factory. It is called the

    7 Blue Factory; it's a generic name that everyone used

    8 for it because the building is blue, and I will show

    9 you that on photographs where you can see the colour of

    10 it.

    11 Just in front of the Blue Factory, parallel

    12 to the asphalt road, is a building which is referred to

    13 as the Faros Building, because it is written on it,

    14 "Faros," it was the name of the company. It's not a

    15 factory, it's an administrative building.

    16 On the top of the picture, which is, in fact,

    17 south, going south, we have the Express Bus Compound.

    18 This is the compound of a bus company. The white

    19 little bars that you can see in the vicinity are

    20 destroyed buses. This is an important location. You

    21 will see it in the film which was taken at the time of

    22 the events, either by RS news or by Mr. Zoran

    23 Petrovic. This place was absolutely packed with

    24 people.

    25 Several witnesses talk about groups of



  112. 1 soldiers getting inside this compound by night and

    2 flashing lights on people to identify them, and

    3 separating men out of the crowd of refugees and taking

    4 them in unknown directions. It is also the location

    5 where people talk about desperate individuals, scared

    6 of the way they will die, who committed suicide. One

    7 body was found in a little side room, which is behind

    8 the factory, he had hung himself in that room.

    9 On the top of the picture, but unfortunately

    10 under the white frame here [indicates], is another

    11 little group of factories which you will see from other

    12 pictures. But their names are of interest because the

    13 witnesses will refer to them as well.

    14 One is the building of Energoinvest, and the

    15 other one, which was also absolutely packed with

    16 refugees, is the factory of 11 of March, "11 of March"

    17 being the name of the factory. We will return to that

    18 specific factory for the reason that I told you that we

    19 could not conduct forensics about criminal events which

    20 happened in this place, this is a fact, but we have a

    21 very compelling story from one witness, and we found

    22 elements on the ground which we believe entitle us to

    23 give credit to this witness. We will talk about that

    24 at a later stage. But this is the location where the

    25 events will happen, in the vicinity of 11 of March



  113. 1 Factory.

    2 And the factory south of it, the Zinc

    3 Factory, this is a huge building. This was also

    4 crowded with refugees, and separations took place also

    5 in this one. It's always the same process: a group of

    6 soldiers getting in and selecting men or taking people

    7 out. Murders were committed behind these factories.

    8 You will hear about them, depending on the will of

    9 these witnesses to come and testify.

    10 A very important feature seen on this

    11 photograph is the White House. Behind it is the

    12 electrical station. It was marked because it is just

    13 near it. We have no elements about what happened

    14 there, and we forgot to mark -- we will probably need

    15 to add that -- an arrow on this building here

    16 [indicates], which is a building we call the Blue

    17 Building. Everyone refers to it like this. So we have

    18 two blue buildings; one is the Blue Factory, not to be

    19 confused with the Blue Building, which is much smaller,

    20 as you will see on other photographs.

    21 The Blue Building is the location where the

    22 water tank is on the live footages which can be seen at

    23 the time of the events. This is where Zoran Petrovic

    24 addresses a Dutch officer, asking him, "What is going

    25 on here?"



  114. 1 The White House is probably the most

    2 important element in this picture. This is the

    3 location where the men were taken after separation.

    4 You will see in a close-up that this little group of

    5 black things here on the picture [indicates] is the

    6 crowd which is building up at the location where the

    7 separation line is. The men who were then separated

    8 here [indicates] walked along the buses, as we could

    9 see on the Zoran Petrovic film, the reason why we can

    10 hardly say in the Zoran Petrovic film that these men

    11 were, in fact, getting out of the White House to be

    12 loaded on buses or if they were coming from the

    13 separation line and led towards the White House. It's

    14 one solution or another. But this is the location

    15 where the men were detained and where Mladic went to

    16 see how they were doing inside.

    17 Major Kingori, the military observer who was

    18 present in that location, also had an opportunity to

    19 visit the inside of this White House and witness the

    20 condition of the people inside.

    21 I am done with this one.

    22 This is Exhibit 53, which is a blow-up of the

    23 previous picture, or of another one, I can't say,

    24 because one has an hour, the other one has none. This

    25 picture is dated 1400 hours, 13 July 1995. I won't



  115. 1 make the comments on the 11th before showing you the

    2 next exhibit which has all the markings on it.

    3 So we pass immediately to Exhibit 54. Here

    4 again we can have as a reference the Blue Factory.

    5 Just in front of the Blue Factory, the building Faros,

    6 which is not marked here, and just on the opposite

    7 side, you have the White House. Next to the house is a

    8 bus, which most probably is there to collect prisoners

    9 who are still inside the house.

    10 At that time of the day the evacuation was

    11 not over, and still some number of men were present in

    12 the area. So this is a problem we had with the

    13 computer. The computer never accepted to print out

    14 properly this part. We'll have to redo one probably.

    15 This is written "people" here. That circle is a crowd

    16 of people. This area here is visible on the Zoran

    17 Petrovic film. This is the location or the area where

    18 the day before General Mladic was addressing the

    19 crowd. This is where his bodyguards were handing over

    20 chocolate bars to the children.

    21 Just behind this crowd is a separation line,

    22 which was also visible on the footage that we saw, just

    23 a rope across the street. UN soldiers were at this

    24 line in order to make some order in the situation, but

    25 the ones who were ruling the show there was the Bosnian



  116. 1 Serb army, who did, in fact, exactly what they wanted.

    2 The UN soldiers were stripped of their equipment

    3 quickly, and on the 13th, no one was in a situation to

    4 oppose what was going on, and the separation was still

    5 ongoing that day.

    6 As you can see, there is a mixture of

    7 vehicles going up and collecting the people. You have

    8 trucks and buses. The water tank is marked again on

    9 this one. What else.

    10 Yes. Then I'm going to start talking about

    11 another -- no. No. Sorry.

    12 On this one also I have marked several things

    13 that we won't have pictures after that to show, but

    14 here we're already entering, in fact, one criminal

    15 situation.

    16 We have several features that we can see

    17 here, a little wooden share which is at the edge of the

    18 zinc factory, another shed which is not visible on the

    19 photograph because it's under the tree line, which is

    20 on a hill behind this factory.

    21 We have this house here, and in front of it

    22 is a cornfield, which on the photograph one can see

    23 that it is a grown-up, grown cornfield. The black line

    24 you can see here is the corn, high corn. The little

    25 white spot which is inside the corn is a vehicle, a



  117. 1 car. I will have to return on that a bit later.

    2 Exhibit number 5/5 is a photograph extracted

    3 from the video film from the helicopter in October 1999

    4 and shows some of the buildings that we had on these

    5 aerial black and white photographs. These ones are not

    6 marked yet.

    7 This is the zinc factory.

    8 Q. For the record, you're pointing to the long

    9 rectangle building on the left-hand side of the road as

    10 you look directly at the photograph?

    11 A. Yes. At the bottom right of the picture, on

    12 the east part of the asphalt road that goes from

    13 Bratunac to Srebrenica, you have the Express compound

    14 building. The location where I was talking about, the

    15 body which was found hanged, is in this little

    16 extension of the building.

    17 Q. When you say "this," you're referring to the

    18 long, rectangular, white building on the right-hand

    19 side of the road; is that correct?

    20 A. This is correct. The White Building which is

    21 the Express compound, the bus compound.

    22 You can also see on this photograph, on the

    23 road just in the direction of Srebrenica, which on this

    24 photograph is on the right, you have a group of trees

    25 here. This is the location where General Mladic was



  118. 1 giving his interview and where his bodyguards were

    2 handing over candies to the children. You can see also

    3 that just in between the road -- the trees are in

    4 between houses. And the road, this is a kind of

    5 construction where, in the Zoran Petrovic film, we

    6 could see refugees assembled, and men among them,

    7 sitting, and one individual, who was wearing a purple

    8 bandanna on his head, was looking at the refugees

    9 behind the fence.

    10 We will return at some point one day on this

    11 individual who is a very interesting man for this

    12 investigation.

    13 Q. Now, Mr. Ruez, just so the record is

    14 perfectly clear, when you referred to trees where

    15 General Mladic gave his interview, you're referring to

    16 the large clump of trees that appear in this picture in

    17 the upper right-hand corner. They appear to bisect or

    18 block the road; is that correct?

    19 A. That is correct, yes. Thank you for the

    20 precision of the description.

    21 Behind these trees, on the top right part of

    22 the photograph, are two buildings of interest. One

    23 is -- we cannot see his colour on this photograph, but

    24 we will see other photographs of it. It's the Blue

    25 Building. It's the one we call the Blue Building,



  119. 1 which is the location where the water tank was

    2 positioned.

    3 These reference points will be important

    4 later on in order to pinpoint precise locations where

    5 people were. We will use them as a reference point to

    6 identify both the fact that this is the location and

    7 the precise spot.

    8 On this same photograph, the last building

    9 one can see on the upper part of the picture totally at

    10 the top right, the White Building. This is the

    11 so-called White House in which the prisoners were

    12 assembled prior to being transported towards Bratunac.

    13 One additional comment. Also on this

    14 picture, one can see also the other little

    15 constructions which are the houses in the vicinity.

    16 The fact is that the main crowd of refugees was

    17 occupying the factories, but as I told you, also the

    18 houses were occupied, and you might face the situation

    19 where people will talk about criminal events in the

    20 vicinity of these houses, because the fact is that

    21 these type of reports are scattered, and we have a lot

    22 of difficulties at this point to identify precisely

    23 where.

    24 Another thing that I have to tell you and

    25 admit, in fact, is that the investigation on the events



  120. 1 in Potocari is the weak point of this investigation.

    2 The reason is that we have spent most of our time

    3 reconstructing the main criminal events, which are the

    4 massive executions. We did not have time yet to

    5 finalise the investigation on Potocari. This is

    6 something still ongoing. We will do it at the moment

    7 the trial continues.

    8 Exhibit 5/6 is a view from the hill which is

    9 just behind --

    10 Q. Mr. Ruez, let me just interrupt you for a

    11 moment. Perhaps we have different exhibits. The 5/6

    12 that I'm holding has a different set of buildings on

    13 it.

    14 A. I have this one.

    15 Q. Perhaps they have been misidentified. Go in

    16 whatever order you like, but since you're using the

    17 official Court copy -- let me just pause for a moment.

    18 That's marked 5/19 in the copy that I have. So we're

    19 perfectly clear and we're operating off the same

    20 photograph, I will change this to 5/6.

    21 A. So this picture is taken from mid-height of a

    22 hill which is behind the Zinc Factory. The view is

    23 turning towards the north, north-east. The asphalt

    24 road going --

    25 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Excuse me.



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  122. 1 Mr. Harmon, which number is this photograph exhibit

    2 number?

    3 MR. HARMON: In my binder, it was originally

    4 5/19, but since Mr. Ruez is testifying from the

    5 official Court exhibits, it should be 5/6 and should be

    6 marked accordingly. So in your copy perhaps it is

    7 5/19.

    8 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Thank you.

    9 MR. HARMON:

    10 Q. Mr. Ruez, please continue.

    11 A. So on this photograph, the interesting

    12 elements are, again in the very centre of the picture,

    13 the Blue Building. On this one, one can this time

    14 clearly see that it is blue, the small one which is

    15 right in the centre. The fact is that from this angle,

    16 this building seems melded with the one behind it,

    17 which is not the case. The one just behind it is the

    18 Feros Building. Behind the Feros Building, the huge

    19 blue structure is the so-called Blue Factory.

    20 On the left of the Blue Factory is the

    21 Akumulator Factory, which is the UN compound. One

    22 important element on the UN compound is this

    23 structure. On top of it, this is the watchtower of the

    24 compound. This is a photograph dated June 1996.

    25 The next exhibit number is 5/7.



  123. 1 Q. That may be marked in your exhibits as 5/9.

    2 So just wait a minute, Mr. Ruez. We will make sure

    3 that we all have the same exhibits.

    4 A. Do you know what?

    5 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] I believe

    6 it is 5/7, which before that was numbered differently.

    7 It said 5/15 before. These are the numbers that we see

    8 here.

    9 MR. HARMON: Well, obviously in preparation

    10 for today and with the massive amount of exhibits,

    11 there has been some confusion. I apologise. We

    12 will -- if I could just have a moment with my

    13 assistant, perhaps we could resolve this.

    14 A. You have a good order. I have a wrong one.

    15 MR. HARMON:

    16 Q. Mr. Ruez, we're going to give you a different

    17 set of these.

    18 A. Now -- mine are mixed, in fact.

    19 Q. Don't despair. So are mine.

    20 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] Now there

    21 is no problem. We are now with 5/7, and I believe it

    22 is this one.

    23 MR. HARMON:

    24 Q. Mr. Ruez, if you can put your set that you're

    25 working with aside, we'll clear your desk, and you can



  124. 1 testify off of the set that I've just handed you.

    2 There are two loose pictures that I have taken out of

    3 sleeves, but they have numbers that may correspond to

    4 the numbers being used by the Judges.

    5 A. Okay. I'm just a bit confused now. Is this

    6 the one we have shown?

    7 Q. I believe we're going to 5/7.

    8 A. Which one is the one I'm supposed to put on

    9 it?

    10 Q. Mr. Ruez, proceed in the order that you want

    11 to proceed in and just identify the photograph as we

    12 progress through them.

    13 A. This is one we are currently working on?

    14 THE REGISTRAR: Yes, this one.

    15 MR. HARMON: Perhaps, Mr. President, this

    16 might be an appropriate time to take a break, conclude

    17 for the day if it's possible. We can sort this out.

    18 We'll be far more efficient tomorrow.

    19 JUDGE RODRIGUES: [Interpretation] I think

    20 this is a good proposal. We can adjourn for the day

    21 and then resume tomorrow after you organise things

    22 better. Of course, you are doing your work, and you

    23 will do it as you like, but tomorrow morning we shall

    24 meet once again at 9.30. Until tomorrow.

    25 MR. HARMON: Thank you.



  125. 1 --- Whereupon the hearing adjourned

    2 at 2.18 p.m., to be reconvened on

    3 Tuesday, the 14th day of March, 2000,

    4 at 9.30 a.m.

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