At the trial of the former Bosnian Serb army chief, Ratko Mladic, the defence completed their cross examination of the protected witness, RM-010, who survived the execution of the Bosniaks in the village of Biljani near Kljuc in July 1992.
Maldic’s lawyer, Miodrag Stojanovic, dedicated the majority of his examination to the events which preceded the crime, including the attack by Bosniak forces on the column of the Yugoslav People’s Army, JNA, and Serb police in the vicinity of Kljuc.
The witness replied that he had heard of the attack.
Asked by the defence whether he knew “if the headquarters of the Army of Republika Srpska in Banja Luka was informed about the tragic events of July 10, 1992”, the witness replied that he did not know.
As with the previous witnesses, on Mladic’s behalf, Stojanovic expressed his regret to RM-010 for everything that he had gone through.
According to the indictment, the Bosnian Serb forces executed around 150 Bosniak men on July 10, 1992, in the village of Biljani near Kljuc.
Mladic, the former commander of the Army of Republika Srpska, is charged with genocide in Srebrenica in 1995 and in seven other Bosnian municipalities in 1992, the expulsion of Bosniaks and Croats across Bosnia and Herzegovina, terrorizing Sarajevo citizens with a campaign of shelling and sniping and taking international soldiers as hostages between 1992 and 1995.
After examination of the witness RM-010, the trial resumed behind closed doors, with the testimony of another protected witness code-named RM-018.
A closed session is the highest degree of protection that can be granted to a witness at the Hague Tribunal.
The trial is scheduled to resume on August 31.
In July 1995 Srebrenica was shelled and occupied by the Army of Republic of Srpska,VRS, despite being declared a protected area by the United Nations. More than 7,000 people were killed, the victims of genocide.
Key dates and events in the Bosnia war.
The Bosnian Serb commander’s role in the genocide committed in Srebrenica is described in detail in many indictments and verdicts pronounced before local and international judicial institutions.