May 30, 1996

War Crimes Witness May Refuse to Testify

By MIKE O'CONNOR

UZLA, Bosnia-Herzegovina -- A key witness in the war-crimes case against the Bosnian Serb military commander said Wednesday that because he had been given no protection by the international war crimes tribunal or the Bosnian government, he might refuse to testify out of fear that he or a member of his family would be killed by Serbian assassins.

The witness, Mevludin Oric, 24, has told the war crimes tribunal he survived the capture of the Bosnian town of Srebrenica in an offensive led by the Bosnian Serb commander, Gen. Ratko Mladic. Based on the testimony of people like Oric, the general has been indicted by the tribunal on charges of genocide in connection with ordering the executions of thousands of men and boys taken prisoner there last July.

Oric was prepared to corroborate the prosecution's claims.

Now he says he has lost faith in the tribunal's interest in protecting him, his wife or their three small children who live in a refugee compound and rely on Bosnian government handouts for food.

"I can't believe they can't find a place for me and my family that is safe," he said.

His fears underscore what critics say is a serious shortcoming in the international effort to bring indicted war criminals from the Bosnian fighting to justice.

Representatives of international agencies expressed shock -- but no solutions -- when they learned of Oric's predicament.

"This is unspeakable," said James Lyons, deputy director of the U.N. police monitors for northeast Bosnia. "I can't understand how the tribunal would leave them so exposed," he said. "Not only to people from the outside, but they are surrounded by desperate refugees who might do anything to get a little extra food for their families."

Lyons said the U.N. mandate did not allow his officers to protect witnesses. "There is nothing I can offer them," he said.

NATO commanders have also defined their responsibilities in Bosnia in a way that excludes witness protection, saying that they are not required to protect individuals or groups, but rather to help create an atmosphere of safety.

The tribunal, which is convening in The Hague, said it also could not help. "Once the witnesses are in here, we can guarantee them full protection," the tribunal's spokesman, Christian Chartier, said in The Hague. But until then, he said, "We must rely on local authorities."

Chartier said the tribunal had six employees who coordinated protection with local police for all its cases in the former Yugoslavia, but that in Bosnia only one person was being protected.

Bosnian police officials were not available for comment.

When the Bosnian Serbs moved into Srebrenica last summer, the Muslim women, children and many of the elderly people living in the area were expelled, and most of the men escaped over the mountains, fearing they would be captured and killed. According to the tribunal's indictment of Mladic, thousands of the men were taken and executed at several sites.

Oric and two other men say they survived the mass executions at what is thought to be the main execution site, a field near Karakaj. The prisoners were being held in a school gymnasium before being taken out to be shot, they said. They saw the Bosnian Serb military commander, Mladic, confer with the soldiers.

"Fifteen minutes after he left, they started taking us to the field nearby to be shot," Oric said.

Experts familiar with the tribunal's case say Oric's testimony is the most detailed and convincing among the three witnesses.

Another survivor, Smail Hodzic, 65, a peasant farmer with little education from the backwoods of Bosnia, said Wednesday that no one had told him that his testimony against Mladic could put him in danger, and he has not been offered protection.

"The investigators from the tribunal just said that I should go there and tell people what I saw," he said, seemingly puzzled that it might be hazardous to testify against a man accused of war crimes and genocide and who still commands the Bosnian Serb army.

Hodzic lives with relatives five miles from the part of Bosnia still controlled by Serbian forces.

The third man, whose testimony is consistent with Oric's, according to officials, was not available to be interviewed.

The men said they were able to evade their executioners' bullets by dropping down and lying still as the bodies of the dead and dying fell in piles on top of them. They encountered one another when they escaped after nightfall.

Tribunal investigators, who asked to remain anonymous, said Oric's accounts had been essential in finding a mass grave where they did preliminary digging in April. After uncovering human bones and the blindfolds that Oric said were put on the prisoners about to be shot, investigators determined they would do extensive exhumations in the summer.

When they examined the field, investigators concluded that it had been extensively tampered with and that evidence might have been removed. But a tribunal spokesman said that the missing physical evidence was not critical since its main importance was to substantiate the statements of witnesses like Oric.

Evidence against both Mladic and Dr. Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb political leader, both of whom remain at large, will be made public by the tribunal in proceedings on June 27.

The presentation of the evidence linking the two men to the genocide is likely to result in international warrants, which will increase political pressure for their arrest.