In a recent series of blog posts entitled "Mladic in
Srebrenica," I examined the reported movements of the former Bosnian Serb
military commander during the days immediately following the fall of the United
Nations "safe area" in July 1995. Today,
I will address the larger question of Mladic's responsibility for the murders
of around 8,000 Muslim men and boys dumped in mass graves, as shown on the map
above.
Mladic's defense lawyers have said they are planning to
mount a
two-tier defense. First, they will
argue that the number of Bosnian Muslim victims has been wildly exaggerated. While they concede that there may have been
some scattered "revenge killings" following the capture of the enclave, they
claim that the overwhelming majority of the deaths were due to combat, or even
Muslims fighting among themselves. Former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic has employed a similar
defense in his own trial, which recently moved into the Srebrenica phase.
The second pillar of the Mladic defense will be the claim
that he left the Srebrenica area by the time the mass executions began, and was
not himself present at any of the execution sites. His attorneys will argue that he did not
order the executions and cannot be held responsible for isolated acts of
revenge by forces under his overall command.
Let us concede from the start that there is no "smoking gun"
against Mladic, in the form of a written order or diary entry proving that he
ordered the murders of 8,000 Muslims. Furthermore, claims by survivors of the
massacres that Mladic personally supervised the executions have yet to be
independently corroborated. As I
indicated in a recent
blog post, I have seen no evidence (other than disputed survivor testimony) showing
that Mladic was in the Srebrenica\Zvornik area on July 14, prior to meeting
international envoys in Belgrade. If
anybody knows of such evidence, please let me know, and I will be happy to
update the post.
While Mladic's whereabouts
on July 14-at the time of the Orahovac executions-remain in doubt, he appears
to have solid alibis for July 15-17, during which period thousands of Muslim
prisoners were killed in the Zvornik area, north of Srebrenica. The fact that he was not on the spot does not of course mean that he was not giving orders from afar, through his established chain of command.
Even if we give
Mladic the benefit of the doubt about his physical presence at the mass execution
sites, there remains a mountain of evidence suggesting that he was the primary
initiator and organizer of Europe's
worst atrocity since World War II. To summarize the most important points:
Mladic's public
statements. From the moment he first
set foot in Srebrenica, on the afternoon of July 11, Mladic made clear that he
was out for "revenge against the Turks," his derogatory term for Bosnian
Muslims. He orchestrated an
atmosphere of extreme intimidation around his meetings with Dutchbat
commanders and Muslim representatives on July 11 and 12, telling the Muslims
that they had a choice whether "to survive or disappear." He ordered an
information blackout on July 13, closing roads to all non-authorized
traffic and barring journalists from entering the area.
Supervision of the
transportation operation. After
initially asking the United Nations to provide transportation for Muslim
refugees out of Srebrenica area, Mladic personally supervised the procurement
of buses and fuel. He was present
at Potocari when his troops separated men and boys of fighting age from the
women and children, and refused to allow United Nations military observers to
inspect the nearby "White House," where the men were being held. He visited some of the detention sites for
Muslim refugees, including Sandici meadow (toward the bottom of the map), on
July 12 and 13.
His presence in the
Srebrenica area between July 11-13. While Mladic's movements on July 14 are
still unclear, there is plenty of eyewitness testimony and other evidence to
show that he remained in the Srebrenica area for three days, from July 11 to 13,
and spoke
with large groups of prisoners who were later executed. During this period, there were
well-documented cases of "opportunistic killings" of Muslim captives by Bosnian
Serb forces, as well as a massacre of around 1,000 Muslim men in the Kravica
warehouse.
His control over
Bosnian Serb forces. Videos
taken of the capture of Srebenica demonstrate Mladic's penchant for
micro-management. He concerned himself with the smallest details of military
operations, and made it his business to know exactly what was going on. He was both feared and revered by his
soldiers, who knew that they faced harsh punishment if they disobeyed his
orders. The Srebrenica killings involved
thousands of people in a vast logistic operation that included the requisition
of fleets of buses, organization of execution squads, and the use of heavy
earth-moving equipment for mass graves in a dozens different locations.
The actions of his
immediate subordinates. Several
Bosnian Serb officers, including General Radislav Krstic, commander of the
Drina Corps, have testified that the executions were organized by a
tightly-knit group of Mladic aides. A
key role appears to have been played by Colonel Ljubisha Beara, a trusted
Mladic associate, who was found guilty of genocide, extermination and murder in
June 2010 and sentenced to life imprisonment. Judges found that Beara was the "driving force behind the murder enterprise"
and was visited many of the detention and execution sites. Given their close ties and commander-subordinate
relationship, it seems inconceivable that Beara could have mounted such a vast operation
without receiving orders from Mladic.
The cover-up. Mladic's
own diary shows that he was personally confronted with demands by
international envoys to explain what had happened to the missing Srebrenica men
on the evening of July 14. Instead of halting the executions, he allowed them
to continue. After the United States
published reconnaissance photos of the grave sites in August, Mladic
mobilized heavy earth-moving equipment and trucks to scatter the remains of
the victims in secondary graves across eastern Bosnia.
That leaves the "there weren't that many murders" defense. As I have mentioned in previous posts,
Srebrenica is probably the most meticulously documented war crime in history. DNA
matches have been found for 5,600 of the 8,000 or so victims. In
order to seriously challenge this estimate, it is necessary to cast doubt on
the impartiality and expertise of hundreds of international crime scene
investigators, forensic scientists, demographers, and contemporaneous witnesses,
including Bosnian Serb officials. While
it is possible that several hundred of the Muslims who fled Srebrenica
following its capture by Mladic's forces, were "killed in combat," the vast
majority were murdered at specific execution sites far removed from the scene
of the fighting.
Please click on the following links for a detailed
explanation of Mladic's actions and movements on July
11, July
12, July
13, and July
14.
Next week I will look at the role played by the
international community in the fall of Srebrenica and the ability of western
intelligence, particularly U.S. intelligence , to track the massacres in real
time.
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