A prosecution witness at the Bratunac war crimes trial said he had moved Bosniaks' decomposing bodies to a pit where they were buried.
The witness at the trial of ex-Bosnian Serb military policeman Savo Bacic said he was asked to use his tractor to shift nine bodies from a storage warehouse after the truck usually used to transport them broke down.
“In the storage warehouse were people who loaded the bodies, they had masks on and plastic gloves because there was an unbearable stench,” recalled witness Dane Loncarevic, a former member of the civil defence unit in Bratunac.
“I made two rounds to Redzica Polje, transporting nine Muslim bodies. The order was issued by [Bratunac’s civil defence commander] Dragan Mirkovic, and I drove them to the pit where they were buried,” Loncarevic said.
The prosecution charges Babic, then commander of the military police in Bratunac, with ordering, committing and failing to prevent the imprisonment of non-Serb civilians in the Vuk Karadzic primary school in Bratunac in May 1992.
Around 400 imprisoned civilians were beaten and tortured every day, and several dozen were killed or died as a result of the conditions at the school, the indictment alleges.
Loncarevic said that civilian police were guarding the school entrance and that in April 1992 it was forbidden to approach the building.
He said that he heard from Mirkovic that Savo Babic, whom he knew from before the war, was commander of the military police.
The trial resumes on Monday.
Timeline of events in the case against 13 former Serb fighters charged with committing war crimes in the villages of Cuska, Zahac, Ljubenic and Pavlac in Kosovo in 1999.