Visibly tired and with bloodshot eyes, Oric looked tense as prosecutors drew Nedret Mujkanovic onto topics such as the mistreatment of Serb prisoners at the hands of the defendant’s local militia, and looting and burning of Serb villages in the surrounding area.
But the defendant appeared to relax as Mujkanovic went on to blame incidents of looting on the starving local population, and spoke of a chaos in which “no one, including Oric, could have [had] effective control over civilians and the armed forces”.
By the end of his testimony, Mujkanovic had become the latest in a series of witnesses called by the prosecution whose testimonies have in fact appeared to end up doing more for the defence.
Mujkanovic, now aged 44, first arrived in Srebrenica in August 1992 to establish a war hospital for its besieged population. A young and inexperienced surgeon, he found himself forced to operate in conditions he described as “worse than medieval Europe”.
Besides starvation caused by the Serb blockade, the population of the town was also subject to shelling, which killed and wounded thousands in the first year of the Bosnian war alone.
Cut off from medical supplies from the outside world and with no electricity or running water, Mujkanovic carried out around 1,400 operations over the nine months he spent in the town – 200 of them without any anaesthetic.
In court, he recalled one particular day just after his arrival, when a large number of wounded arrived in the hospital. “I had three makeshift surgical tables, on which I performed amputations without anaesthesia or any painkillers,” he said. “I remember that all too well.
“If there was ever hell on earth, it must have been Srebrenica in 1992 and 1993,” he added.
Mujkanovic is the first Bosnian Muslim to testify against Oric and he had all the makings of a key prosecution witness. During his time in Srebrenica he became a member of the accused’s inner circle and according to some accounts was even privy to Oric’s plans for attacks on Serb villages in the area.
He was lauded by the international media at the time for his work in Srebrenica, and came to share the defendant’s status as a national hero. After the war, he went on to enjoy a flourishing career – joining the opposition Party for Bosnia and Hercegovina, becoming the local minister for health in the Tuzla canton and taking charge of the Tuzla Clinical Centre, one of the most important institutions of its kind in the country.
In court, Mujkanovic confirmed that Oric’s men had carried out military operations in the villages around Srebrenica during his stay in the enclave. And he also acknowledged that Serb villages were looted and houses burned.
But at times he appeared evasive and, in the end, much of his evidence in fact appeared to support the case put forward by Oric’s defence counsel.
Describing the situation in Srebrenica at the time as “total chaos”, he told the court “it was unclear who was in charge of what and who was superior to whom”.
Asked about looting, he put the blame firmly at the feet of the desperate civilian population, claiming, “The only thing the troops were interested in were weapons and ammunition.”
Most military operations against villages in the area were in fact planned in secret to avoid problems, he said, explaining that whenever civilians found out they would gather close to the village “so they could attack as early as possible”.
In one village, he said he personally witnessed women and children burning houses “after they had taken everything they could carry”.
Oric was “fiercely opposed to those acts of burning and looting” he insisted, and there was the additional problem that many civilians who became involved in such attacks also ran into landmines planted around the villages.
But he said there was nothing the accused could do. “The civilians simply could not be kept under control,” the witness told the court.
Prosecutors also pushed the witness to speak about Serb prisoners who received treatment in the Srebrenica hospital.
Several ethnic Serbs have testified that they ended up there after being beaten and tortured in Srebrenica prison by men allegedly under Oric’s command. All praised one particular doctor at the hospital –most likely Mujkanovic – who treated them well and who some considered to have saved their lives.
When Mujkanovic confirmed that Oric often visited patients in the hospital, prosecutors demanded to know whether he paid “special attention” to Serb patients. But Mujkanovic insisted the accused “paid the same sort of attention to everyone, [Muslims] and Serbs alike”.
Merdijana Sadovic is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
