Mladic Witness: Serb Army Didn’t Control Camps

Drasko Vujic, wartime commander of one of the Bosnian Serb Army brigades in Prijedor, testified at the Hague Tribunal on Monday that forces under Mladic’s control did not have any authority over the notorious Omarska and Keraterm prison camps in the east of the country.

He also described the camp in Trnopolje as a “collective centre”, and said Bosniaks went there voluntarily, without coercion.

Vujic further testified that he did not know about any crimes committed in the camps in 1992.

He did say however that various paramilitary groups “made problems for Serbs and Muslims” in the Prijedor region.

Vujic told the judges that Serb paramilitary boss Zeljko Raznatovic, alias Arkan, was in close connection with the Prijedor chief of police Simo Drljaca, but that he did not know who invited Raznatovic’s ‘Tigers’ to Prijedor.

“I don’t know who ordered them, but it was not the army,” he said.

Mladic, the former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, is charged with taking part in the persecution of Muslims and Croats, which alleged reached the scale of genocide in several municipalities – Prijedor being one of them. He is also charged with genocide in Srebrenica, terrorising the population of Sarajevo and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.

The trial continues.

Birn