In its closing arguments, the defence for Zoran Ilic said no proof had been presented that the defendant committed the crimes in July 1995 of which he is accused.
The closing argument marked the end of the trial of Ilic and Dragan Neskovic, former members of the Jahorina Training Centre with the Special Brigade of the Ministry of the Interior of Republika Srpska, MUPRS.
Ilic’s defence said that the Prosecution had failed to prove beyond doubt that Ilic took part in imprisoning Bosniaks on the Bratunac–Konjevic Polje road in mid-July 1995 when around a thousand men from the recently captured town of Srebrenica were taken to the nearby warehouse of the Kravica agricultural cooperative and executed.
“The Defence disputed the evidence by the Prosecution convincingly. The facts in Ilic’s favour have been fully established,” his lawyer, Milos Peric, said.
He said the Prosecution had based Ilic’s guilt for the crime at the Kravica warehouse on the testimony of a sole protected witness, NI-104, who said at the trial that he saw the defendant “verifying” the victims.
But the defence lawyer said that he doubted the authenticity of his testimony.
“The statement of witness NI-104 was not confirmed by anyone else. Twenty witnesses for the Defence and Prosecution said Ilic was elsewhere, or that they did not see him in front of the warehouse in Kravica,” the lawyer said.
He added that the witnesses for the Defence had confirmed that at the time specified in the indictment Ilic was seeing his brother off to the army in Bratunac.
The Defence mantains that it has not been proven that Ilic murdered an imprisoned Bosniak at the village of Jelah near Konjevic Polje on July 17, 1995.
Protected witness NI-101 talked about this during the investigation, said Peric, but then changed his story at the trial.
Neskovic’s defence earlier also requested their client's acquittal.
The Prosecution in its closing arguments asked that Neskovic and Ilic be sentenced to 17 and 15 years in jail respectively.
The Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina will announce its verdict on September 26.
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.