Witness Unaware of Abuses in Nearby Bosnian Serb Prison Camp

A defence witness in the trial of wartime Bosnian Serb army commander Ratko Mladic was questioned last week about a detention camp located close to his workplace, and insisted he knew nothing about abuses taken place there.

Reading out a summary of Sveto Veselinovic’s written testimony, defence lawyer Miodrag Stojanovic described how the witness resigned from all the official posts he held in Rogatica in March 1992, because he believed that “all of the problems could be resolved with negotiations – as opposed to the position of the TO [Territorial Defence force] – and they did not have the mandate to lead the Serbian people to war”.

A new “crisis staff of the Serb municipality of Rogatica” – one of the organisations from which Veselinovic resigned – was formed the following month, and he was reappointed as a member in absentia. The crisis staff was charged with facilitating a division of Rogatica into Serb and Bosniak (Muslim) parts.

Attempts to divide the municipality ended in May 1992 as fighting increased in the area. Veselinovic was given special responsibility for displaced Serb civilians coming into the town of Rogatica.  

Rogatica is one of the municipalities enumerated in the Mladic indictment, which states that in pursuit of “the objective of achieving the objective of the permanent removal of Bosnian Muslims and Bosnian Croats from Bosnian Serb-claimed territory”, the Bosnian Serb political and military institutions “attacked and/or took control of towns and villages in the municipalities.”

Cross-examined by prosecution counsel Arthur Traldi, Veselinovic told the court that the reason he resigned in March 1992 was he was “not in favour of the war option” and that he had differences with the local Territorial Defence chief Rajko Kusic, with whom his relationship then deteriorated.

“I didn’t want to know anything and I didn’t want to go into the activities of the military at all,” he said, adding that this was why he worked solely on refugee issues.

In 1992, Kusic went from being head of the Territorial Defence unit to commander of the Bosnian Serb army’s Rogatica Brigade.

Traldi then noted the witness’s statement that he never visited the Serb-run detention camp at Rasadnik.

“Rasadnik was just a couple of hundred metres away from the Sladara factory, right?” the lawyer said. The crisis staff where Veselinovic was based was on the premises of the Sladara plant.

The witness said that Rasadnik was about half a kilometre away, and that while it was on the road he took to work every day, he “never entered the facility while the police and military were there, and I don’t know who else”.

Veselinovic acknowledged that during the war, he was aware there was a military detention facility at Rasadnik.

“The chamber has received evidence that people detained there were subjected to serious violent crimes, including crimes of sexual violence; that detainees were taken out and murdered by an officer in the Rogatica Brigade,” Traldi said. “So I put to you that you knew people there were being abused, and that’s why you didn’t want to see it; that’s why you didn’t want to go there. That’s true, right?”

“That’s not true. I’ve already told you what the reason is,” the witness said, adding that he had been aware from his brother, a judge, that Bosnian Serb soldiers who had committed misdemeanours were held there “and also Muslim prisoners”.

Traldi said the trial chamber understood that Bosniak prisoners were held at the Sladara facility itself. “Were you also unaware of that?” he asked.

Veselinovic replied that he and his colleagues in the crisis staff used an administrative building at the factory, but he was certain that the Bosnian Serb military and police did not use the same gate as them.

“So I don’t know,” he said.

The prosecutor referred to an incident in mid-June 1992 involving “several busloads of Muslims from outside the Rogatica municipality being taken to the Sladara facility and transferring buses there”.

“I don’t know about that incident,” the witness replied.

“It’s the position of the prosecution that the Muslims on those buses were then taken to an area near the Sokolac-Rogatica municipality border and murdered. Can I take it you’re also not aware of that?” Traldi asked.

“Later I heard about that happening, but then I did not know and I didn’t see those buses,” the witness replied.

Questioned on the detention of civilians in the area generally, Veselinovic said he had heard that Kusic asked “all loyal citizens” to come to a local secondary school to be “shielded from the war operations”.