Courtside

Sole Survivor of Drinjaca Massacre Gives Evidence

Trial of Zupljanin and Stanisic hears how men were beaten and shot by Serb forces.

By Velma Saric in Sarajevo (TU No 623, 6-Nov-09)

The sole survivor of a May 1992 massacre told the trial of two former Bosnian Serb police chiefs this week how he was shot and left for dead by Serb forces who killed his father and three brothers.

The protected witness, known as ST-14, had his face and voice disguised and gave much of his evidence in closed session at the Hague tribunal trial of Stojan Zupljanin and Mico Stanisic, who are accused of crimes committed between April 1 and December 31 1992, in Bosnia and Hercegovina.

They are alleged to have participated in a joint criminal enterprise aimed at the permanent removal of non-Serbs from the territory of an intended Serb state.

Zupljanin, who became an adviser to the then-Bosnian Serb president and Hague indictee Radovan Karadzic in 1994, is accused of the extermination, murder, persecution, and deportation of non-Serbs in north-western Bosnia between April and December 1992.

Stanisic is charged with murder, torture and cruel treatment of non-Serb civilians, as well as for his failure to prevent or punish crimes committed by his subordinates in municipalities throughout Bosnia and Hercegovina, including Zvornik.

The witness described the systematic execution of more than 80 Muslim men by Serb forces in the municipality of Zvornik in May 1992. The witness, the only survivor of this massacre in which his father and three of his brothers were killed, had previously given testimony on the same events in the Slobodan Milosevic and Vojislav Seselj cases.

The complete transcript of his testimony in the Milosevic case on May 29 and June 2, 2007 was included on the record this week.

At the beginning of the main examination, prosecutor Joanna Korner said that "the witness is the only survivor of one of the major and most severe massacres in the indictment, the execution of around 88 men at Drinjaca on May 30, 1992”.

According to the indictment, Stanisic is charged with the killing of a number of men in the Drinjaca school in Zvornik, on or about May 30, 1992.

During a brief examination by the prosecution, the witness identified the cultural centre and the yard of the elementary school in Drinjaca on maps and photographs, showing the sites where people were imprisoned and where the crimes had happened - including the spots he pointed out as “execution sites” on the maps.

In his previous testimony during the Milosevic and Seselj cases, the witness had described how Serb forces entered Kostijerevo, in the Zvornik municipality.

Describing the execution he had survived, the witness went on to explain that in the night of May 30 members of Serb forces imprisoned more than 80 men in the hall of the Drinjaca cultural centre.

The witness said that some of them were so badly beaten and stabbed, that they "begged to be given a gun to shoot themselves".

That evening, around 9pm, they began taking prisoners out in groups of 10, the witness said.

After each group was taken out, gunfire was heard, following which the Serb forces would go back in to take another batch of prisoners, he said.

The witness said that he had been taken out with the fifth group, and while they were being led away, one of the men tried to escape, and the soldiers opened fire. Subsequently, the witness was shot in the hip.

As he lay on the ground, pretending he was dead, one of the soldiers was suspicious and kicked him, followed by a burst of gunfire, he said.

“I thought: now I will die for sure,” the witness said. However, he was only hit in the shoulder. When the soldiers went in to get another group of prisoners, the witness ran and fled the site.

He said he watched Bosnian Serb army, VRS, soldiers load bodies onto a truck that had arrived in the meantime - and his father and three brothers were among the ones executed.

Velma Saric is an IWPR trainee.