[Marxism] Srebrenica

[Anna Fierling <anna_fierling@xxxxxxxxx>]

http://www.guardian.co.uk

How video that put Serbia in dock was brought to light

Srebrenica massacre tape has at last forced Belgrade
to face up to its war atrocities

Tim Judah in Sarajevo and Daniel Sunter in Belgrade
Sunday June 5, 2005
The Observer

For 10 years they have not slept easy. The casual
killers of the six cowed and beaten prisoners from
Srebrenica were happy to play to the camera that day
in July 1995, high on victory and heroes in the eyes
of many fellow Serbs. But, as the years have worn on,
that sheen has dimmed and the fear has grown. Did the
tape still exist? Who had it? Where was it?

For the first time since the execution video was shown
at the UN's war crimes tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia in The Hague on Wednesday, The Observer can
reveal the full story of the tape that has rocked not
just Serbia and Bosnia, but the whole world.

It is the extraordinary story of how the tape was
hidden for more than nine years but then, as its
existence was revealed in a trial in Serbia, how a
race began between the frightened killers and Serbia's
leading human rights activist to find it - to destroy
it or get it out to the world.

The tape is also the 'smoking gun', for it is the
final, incontrovertible proof of Serbia's part in the
Srebrenica massacres in which more than 7,500 Bosnian
Muslim men and boys were murdered. Until last week
Serbian officials, both from the wartime regime of
Slobodan Milosevic and since his fall in 2000, have
argued that Serbia was not involved with the
massacres. Now, the tape proves that to have been a
lie.

It will prove valuable ammunition, not just in trials
like that of Milosevic but also in Bosnia's action at
the UN's International Court of Justice in which it
has charged Serbia with complicity in genocide. The
gruesome tape shows the execution of six Bosnian
Muslim prisoners, four of whom were under 18 and the
other two under 30. The beaten prisoners, hands bound,
are shown lying face down in a lorry. A guard kicks
one in the head. They are ordered off the truck, told
to lie down and, in a later clip, shot in the back
while standing.

The first four to die are ordered to walk forward, one
by one, and then shot. Then the hands of the last two
are unbound and they are told to carry the bodies to
another spot, where they are also shot.

The cameraman, known by his nickname, Bugar, is
impatient. He wants his fellow Skorpions, a unit
belonging to Serbia's Ministry of the Interior, to
hurry because his camera battery is running low.

The murders took place close to the village of Trnovo,
which lies 30 minutes' drive east of Sarajevo, which
was then still a city besieged by Serbian forces. From
the beginning of the war in 1992, Trnovo was in
Serbian hands.

In the summer of 1995 General Ratko Mladic, the
Bosnian Serb army commander, is determined to win the
war. He needs to concentrate all his men around the
east Bosnian Muslim enclave of Srebrenica, declared a
UN safe haven. He plots a strategy. His own men will
deal with the enclave, but men from Serbia will attack
Sarajevo to create a diversion and to tie down Bosnian
government troops. Enter the Skorpions. Since 1991
this unit has played a key role, especially in eastern
Slavonia, that part of Serbian-held eastern Croatia
abutting Serbia. It is headquartered in Sid, an
unremarkable little town, 80km north-west of Belgrade,
but which during the Croatian war became the
jumping-off point for the Serbian attack on eastern
Croatia.

Their job is special - 'black operations' - and they
are also used by the Milosevic regime to make sure the
local Serb authorities, especially in occupied eastern
Slavonia, do as they are instructed. To keep them
happy, Belgrade allows them a free hand in smuggling
and looting.

It is now 26 June, 1995. The Skorpions are about to
set off for Bosnia and, while dogs nose around, an
Orthodox priest blesses the men who are wearing red
berets and black jumpsuits. Next clip: they are in
Pale, by the coaches which have brought them to the
Bosnian Serb wartime capital. They pose for the camera
in front of Pale's roadside name sign. Next clip: the
executions.

What has been shown on Serbian and Bosnian TV is four
minutes of a two-hour tape. As the Skorpions went into
action this was, in effect, their Bosnian 95 tour
video. Says Natasa Kandic, Serbia's leading rights
campaigner, who gave the tape to Serbia's war crimes
court and the one in The Hague, 'they filmed
everything'.

Soon after arriving in Pale, the men were sent to
Trnovo and from there they fanned out to launch their
feint on Sarajevo. The plan worked, and on 11 July the
defences of Srebrenica had collapsed. Now thousands of
prisoners were falling into the hands of Mladic. Up on
Mount Jahorina, overlooking Sarajevo, says Kandic, the
Bosnian Serb leader, Radovan Karadzic, and his
Vice-President, Nikola Koljevic, needed to work on
distributing the prisoners. In Trnovo the Skorpions
were ordered to send some of their vehicles to
Srebrenica to collect their share of the Muslim
captives. According to Kandic, who heads Belgrade's
Humanitarian Law Centre and who has the story from the
man who gave her the tape, a coach packed with more
than 50 prisoners arrived in Trnovo.

At that point the only people in Trnovo were the
Skorpion's commander, Slobodan Medic, then 28, and a
few of his men. Medic, says Kandic, now got orders 'to
take some people from the bus and kill them. He told
his men to take six'. The six seem to have been taken
by truck, up to a secluded spot close by called
Godevinske Bare, where the killings took place. The
coach with the other prisoners then continued to other
locations and 'all the other prisoners were killed',
says Kandic.

Bugar, the man filming, was a close friend of Medic.
The day after the killings, which took place between
15 and 19 July, he gave the camera to someone else.
When the unit came home to Sid that person made 20
copies, distributed among the then acclaimed Skorpion
'heroes'.

When he discovered this, Medic was furious. He knew
the tape could be used as evidence if it fell into the
wrong hands. He ordered everyone to return the tapes
and 20 were destroyed. But one man, who had rowed with
his colleagues and had left Trnovo the day before the
executions, made one more copy for himself. Fearful
and uncertain what to do, the man, whom Kandic cannot
name but who will testify at The Hague, hid the tape
outside Serbia. For years nothing happened.

That is, until 2003. As war broke out in Kosovo, the
Skorpions were reactivated. In March 1999 they lived
up to their reputation, killing 19 ethnic Albanian
civilians in Podujevo. Two Skorpions were put on trial
and in 2003, one of them, who agreed to testify
against the others, mentioned that a tape of their
Bosnia 95 tour existed. Kandic contacted the man, who
said he did not have it but knew the man who did. She
went to Sid and found him. He gave it to Kandic who
agreed not to use it until he was out of the country.

In Sid, tension began to rise. Kandic had been spotted
there with the man who had the tape and the other
Skorpions guessed he had told her about the Srebrenica
prisoners. A desperate hunt began. Kandic began to get
reports that the Skorpions were attacking and
harassing people in Sid as they searched for the
cassette.

On 9 December, the Hague tribunal released on bail
Frenki Simatovic, former head of the Red Berets,
another Interior Ministry unit which had worked with
the Skorpions, and Jovica Stanisic, former head of the
Serbian secret police. The orders went out to find the
tape.

In Serbia, with the tenth anniversary of the massacre
coming up, Kandic, angry at claims in public by
various personalities that Srebrenica had been
'liberated' and that there had been no genocide, said
she had seen the tape.

On 23 May she gave it to Serbia's own war crimes
prosecutor. He promised to investigate, but no arrests
were made. She also gave it to The Hague's prosecution
team, who showed it on Wednesday. Immediately
afterwards she gave it to Serbian TV.

Within 24 hours four men had been arrested in Serbia,
including Slobodan Medic. Six more were brought in for
questioning but were later released. Three are on the
run. Serbia's police dossier on the case contains 136
names.

For the Serbian authorities, a psychological barrier
has been smashed. Pressure is now mounting on them to
arrest at least Mladic, who is believed to be in
Serbia. Svetozar Marovic, the President of Serbia and
Montenegro, has said he will be arrested within a
month. Boris Tadic, the President of Serbia, wants to
attend the commemoration of the massacre at Srebrenica
on 10 July.

Now, says Kandic, Serbia must arrest Mladic. 'After
this,' she says, 'there is no choice. Serbs have been
forced to see what happened and they have to stop
denying that Serbia's forces were there.'


                
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