5.1.
July 13th, 1995
Executions
The International Tribunal has established on the basis of evidence, that more than 8,000 Muslims, men and boys, either civilians or prisoners of war, were killed in the course of a well-organized and planned operation that lasted less than a week and required significant logistical arrangements and resources.
Soldiers needed to be mobilized to guard the prisoners, and transferred from their positions to those of the execution sites to shoot the prisoners. A number of locations needed to be identified and secured for the detention and execution of the prisoners. Thousands and thousands of bullets needed to be provided for the executions, ligatures and blindfolds needed to be prepared. Numerous vehicles and hundreds of litres of fuel needed to be requested to transport the prisoners.
The judge found that far from being a flash of rage or revenge, it was deliberate and decided at the highest level.
Reconstruction: Establishing the facts about the executions
“I arrived in Tuzla on 20th of July 1995 and started the investigation. And just to be precise about the investigation: the investigation was about the events that unfolded after the noon of the 11th of July. So it’s not an investigation about why air strikes didn’t happen, it’s not an investigation about the takeover of the enclave, it’s an investigation about the criminal events that followed the fall of the enclave.“
- Jean-René Ruez, Chief Superintendent at the French National Police, former Head of the Hague Tribunal Investigative Team for Srebrenica
Genocide mechanism
Beginning of the destruction of the Bosniak men of Srebrenica
Column
Bratunac - Konjevic Polje - Nova Kasaba
During the next three days a column of 12,000-15,000 people progressed north.
On July 13th, groups that had broken off from the column made their way to the main road and finally managed to cross the road by dawn. The last large groups crossed the asphalt road around 6.00 am, at which point any further movement was impossible, as the Bosnian Serb Army had placed a large force at the site.
Column
Collection point - Sandici meadow
Groups of men in large numbers from the rear of the column began surrendering to the Bosnian Serb Army. From the start of the day until 5.30 pm, at least 6,000 men from the column were captured in different places on their way to Kladanj and sent to various detention areas.
Witnesses estimated that between 1,000 and 4,000 people captured from the column were detained in Sandici meadow. The soldiers guarding them demanded that they place their belongings in a pile and surrender their valuables.
Punishment and justice: ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia)
“The most important aspect of this is the victims. They want a public acknowledgement, not only from their own people, in this case in Bosnia and Herzegovina, but they want the world to know what happened. They have received the acknowledgement through the evidence of hundreds of witnesses. What happened has been proven.“
- Richard Goldstone, the first Chief Prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal
Column
Collection point: Nova Kasaba football field
Between 1,500 and 3,000 people captured from the column were detained at a football field in Nova Kasaba and forced to surrender their belongings and valuables.
Executions
Jadar
A number of the prisoners held at Nova Kasaba and Konjevic Polje were executed during the morning of July 13th on the banks of the Jadar River, where they were lined up and shot.
Thousands of the Bosnian Muslims taken captive after the fall of Srebrenica were killed in carefully planned mass executions starting on July 13th. Mass executions at the sites further north of Bratunac were carried out between July 14th and 17th.
Mapping genocide
“Richard Goldstone is small, he is not physically impressive, but without him, I think, we couldn’t have the case of genocide. It could be forsaken and forgotten like the genocide in Cambodia with two million killed, like the genocide in Guatemala with 200.000 Mayan people killed, like the genocide in Argentina with 60.000 killed. Genocide happened in Rwanda in 1994. Without such people we cannot have the cases for genocide and it could have been forsaken and forgotten. It’s not and now we have the opportunity to talk and to try to understand the post-genocide society in which we live today.“
- Dr Janja Beč-Neumann, Socioloist, genocide researcher, author and lecturer
Column
BSA order
The Corps and Brigade commanders were ordered to intercept the column. They located a gathered mass of around 5,000 men from the column and opened artillery fire on them.
New York – UN alarm
Various levels at the UN were alarmed that violence had been inflicted against the men of Srebrenica.
The UN Secretary General's special envoy was sent to continue with the renewal of negotiations with Bosnian Serb officials at the highest levels, and if deemed appropriate, with authorities in Belgrade.
Evidence
There were visible signs of the existence of a plan for mass executions - entries in a travel log for a vehicle from the Zvornik Brigade command showed that the same vehicle drove to various locations, where, during the next few days, thousands of Bosnian Muslim men were detained.
Reconstruction: Establishing the facts about the executions
“Establishing the facts follows a natural chronology. The first step is reconstructing the events through the interviews with the victims, the witnesses, but also at a later stage through the eyes of the perpetrators who also entered the interview process.“
- Jean-René Ruez, Chief Superintendent at the French National Police, former Head of the Hague Tribunal Investigative Team for Srebrenica
Executions
Cerska
In the afternoon of July 13th, systematic executions on a large scale began in Cerska. At around 4.00 pm, the Bosnian Serb Army drove buses carrying prisoners to Cerska and executed them.
Executions
Kravica
Late in the afternoon, more than 1,000 prisoners in Sandici village were taken to Kravica and detained in a warehouse. Executions began around 5.00 pm and lasted several hours. Prisoners were killed with infantry arms, machine guns, and grenades. After the last prisoner was killed, an excavator began hauling the bodies out of the warehouse.
Transportation
The physical transfer of prisoners from places in and around Bratunac for temporary detention to detention and execution sites within the area under the responsibility of the Zvornik Brigade represented the second phase of the process.
Reconstruction: Establishing the facts about the executions
“The second phase is to find the places the people are talking about, which is not necessarily obvious and all this has to be done in a hostile environment, in work conditions which are not usual in a normal environment.“
- Jean-René Ruez, Chief Superintendent at the French National Police, former Head of the Hague Tribunal Investigative Team for Srebrenica
Bratunac
Prisoners were kept in the “old school” in Bratunac from the late afternoon of July 13th until the afternoon of July 15th and during this period they were given no food and only a small amount of water.
Other prisoners who were captured on July 13th on the Konjevic Polje – Bratunac road were kept in buses and trucks in the parking lot.
This group of prisoners was first collected at Sandici meadow. They were next loaded onto 5-6 tractor trailers with 20 ton loads. They were then taken to an unknown location in Bratunac, where they spent the night in the trucks. In the morning they were taken to the other end of town, where they waited several hours before they left Bratunac and arrived at the school in Petkovci.
Soldiers of the Military Police Battalion, the 65th Protection Regiment of the Bosnian Serb Army, guarded the 1,500-3,000 prisoners held on the football field. Later that afternoon they were taken to an unknown location in Bratunac. On July 14th they were taken by bus to a high school in the village of Pilica.
Instructions
Miroslav Deronjic testified that at the beginning of July 1995 Radovan Karadzic told him: “Miroslav, they all should be killed - kill all those that fall into your hands.”
Two days after the fall of Srebrenica, Deronjic told Radovan Karadzic by telephone that Bratunac housed a number of prisoners. Karadzic replied: “Someone will come soon with instructions on what to do with them.”
That night, the Bosnian Serb Army Chief of Security came to Deronjic and told him that he had “an order from the highest levels that all prisoners should be executed.”
Executions
Hangar, Bratunac
“It was reported to me that on the evening of July 13th approximately 80 to 100 Bosnian Muslim men had been killed in a hangar at the school 'Vuk Karadzic' in Bratunac.”
- Jovan Nikolic, Witness
Reconstruction: Establishing the facts about the executions
“After this, the aim of the additional phase is to process the crime scenes by taking pictures, videos, documenting them, but also taking samples, processing all these samples in labs, so that is what we call the technical and scientific police aspect of it.“
- Jean-René Ruez, Chief Superintendent at the French National Police, former Head of the Hague Tribunal Investigative Team for Srebrenica
Potocari
Destruction of documents and personal items
All the piles of personal belongings of civilians deported from Potocari, including the identity papers of the men seized, were burned. At that point soldiers from the Dutch battalion were sure that the story about screening for war criminals could not be true. In the absence of personal documents, these men could no longer be accurately identified for any purpose. Rather, the removal of their documents could only be an ominous signal of atrocities to come.
During the evening the BSA Main Staff issued Order I-1638
Order I-1638 concerned the prevention of any leakage of classified military information regarding the performance of activities in this area. This order was sent to the Drina Corps Command. It ordered the closure of the roads except to military and police vehicles engaged in combat operations.
General Major Radislav Krstic was made commander of the Drina Corps.
Telephone conversation
Bosnian Serb Army officers often used unprotected lines because they were faster. The Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina intelligence officers intercepted conversations over these lines. These recordings were later submitted to the Prosecutor’s Office at the Hague Tribunal.
Intercepted telephone conversation
Column: Report on the movements
July 13th, 1995 (2035) BSA Major Dragan Obrenovic submitted a report → to an unidentified BSA General
The General ordered the major to take urgent measures to ensure that “nothing gets through”.
Bratunac
Momir Nikolic, Ljubisa Beara, Miroslav Deronjic, Dragomir Vasic
Concern over the number of prisoners in and around the area of Bratunac soon became a topic of discussion among senior security and political figures in the area.
“Deronjic was afraid the prisoners represented a threat to the city’s security and did not want killings done in or around Bratunac. At the meeting, we openly discussed the killing operations; that all the prisoners be transported to Zvornik, where they would be detained and killed”.
Over the course of three days, July 11th, 12th, and 13th, the entire Muslim population of the enclave had either fled or been deported or killed.
Prelude to genocide
“But more importantly, the genocide itself -- mass killings, imprisonment, torture, and other related atrocities, constituted the final, climactic act in eliminating all non-Serb civilians from the enclave so that the Drina Valley was purely Serb land in political control and habitation.”
- Dr Robert Donia, Historian