Srebrenica Bosniaks ‘Died Jumping from Windows’

Mile Babic, a former member military policeman from the Bratunac Brigade of the Bosnian Serb Army, told the state court on Tuesday that he escorted buses transporting Bosniaks from Srebrenica to the Vuk Karadzic school building in Bratunac in July 1995.

Babic testified that there were about 20 buses and 10 military policemen were deployed next to them.

Babic said one man in grey-olive uniform, who had a semi-automatic rifle, took two or three men out of a bus.

“He takes them out of the bus and takes them behind the school building. Gunshots are heard,” the witness said.

He also said he saw about 10 Bosniaks jumping out of a window on the third, top floor of the school building.

“They jump down and die right after hitting the ground… They put their legs out of the window and jump,” the witness said.

When asked if he could hear shooting coming from the school, he said he heard shooting coming from all sides.

Babic was testifying at the trial of Miodrag Josipovic, Branimir Tesic, Dragomir Vasic, Danilo Zoljic and Radomir Pantic, who are with genocide in Srebrenica, which included the forcible resettlement of the local population, as well as the capture and execution of Bosniak men.

According to the charges, Josipovic was the chief of the public security station, while Tesic was the deputy commander of the police station in Bratunac, Vasic was the commander of the Zvornik police headquarters and chief of the public security centre in Zvornik, while Zoljic was the commander of the public security centre’s special units and Pantic was the commander of the First Company of the special police units.

Also on Tuesday, the trial of former Bosnian Serb soldiers Boris Bosnjak, Milos Mavrak, Miodrag Grubacic and Ilija Djajic, who are charged with wartime crimes in Bileca, opened at the state court in Sarajevo.

They are charged on 45 counts with having beaten and mistreated detainees, on their own or in collaboration with other Bosnian Serb soldiers.

They are accused of punching and kicking them, hitting them with rubber batons, and sometimes giving them electric shocks, allegedly on a daily basis.

The defendants are also charged with having forced some detainees to have sex and intimidating them by taking them to mock executions.

The indictment says that Bosnjak was the commander of the guards at a detention camp located in Mosa Pijade military barracks of the former Yugoslav National Army in Bileca, while Mavrak, Grubacic and Djajic worked there as guards.