Zepa Residents “Could Stay Or Leave”

Friday, 3 September, 2010

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Velma Šarić

IWPR-trained journalist

A wartime municipal official in the eastern Bosnian town of Zepa said this week that Bosnian Serb general Zdravko Tolimir offered residents a choice between staying or leaving, prior to the fall of the town to Serb forces in July 1995. 

Tolimir, the former assistant commander for military intelligence and security in the Bosnain Serb army general staff, is charged with eight counts including genocide, conspiring to perpetrate genocide, extermination, murder, expulsion, forced transfer of population and deportation of Bosniaks from Srebrenica and Zepa in July 1995.

This week, the Tolimir trial saw prosecution witness Hamdija Torlak answer cross-examination by the accused. Torlak, a Bosnian Muslim, was a former chairman of the municipal executive board in Zepa, in eastern Bosnia, and a member of its wartime presidency.

In 1995, Zepa became one of three Bosniak enclaves – along with Srebrenica to the north and Gorazde further upstream – along the Drina valley of in eastern Bosnia that were surrounded by Bosnian Serb troops,

In this appearance before the tribunal, Torlak corrected a statement he gave the day before about negotiations he held with the accused general at a United Nations control post in the Zepa area on July 13, 1995.

Rather than presenting the civilians in Zepa with an ultimatum to leave, Torlak accepted that Tolimir gave them the choice of either remaining in the town or leaving.

Torlak agreed that the proposal was an “offer” to the enclave’s inhabitants, including men of military age, to freely decide whether they wanted to stay or leave, and was not an ultimatum to the whole population to move out from the surrounded area before it was occupied by Bosnian Serb forces.

Torlak said he had clarified the nature of the proposal in his own mind by looking into documents the accused had presented to him, including a report by Tolimir to the central staff commands and to the Drina Corps of the Bosnian Serb Army, VRS, on the negotiations conducted with Zepa representatives on July 13, 1995.

Reading from this document in court, Tolimir, who is defending himself, said that “on July 13, 1995, at noon, we established contact with Hamdija Torlak, a representative of the executive board, and Mujo Omanovic, a member of the wartime municipal presidency, about demilitarising the enclave and allowing free movement for the civilian population in accordance with the Geneva Conventions”.

Tolimir then asked the witness whether he recalled that the Serbs had made an “explicit demand to have men of military age give in their weapons and have the zone demilitarised”, and whether Zepa representatives had insisted that this demand for demilitarisation was the main problem for them.

The witness answered that the demand was indeed the main problem, although he remembered “that after asking whether everyone would be allowed to leave the enclave, even 35-year-olds, [Tolimir] said, ‘of course’”.

Tolimir then continued to read the document paragraph by paragraph.

“We actually offered you the possibility that even soldiers may leave the enclave – is that true?” Tolimir asked.

“Yes, it is; I still remember that very well,” answered the witness.

Tolimir went on to read that “Muslim representatives had pointed out that they were authorised to solve the question of Zepa with certain guarantees”. According to the document, these included enabling the Zepa leadership to hold consultations with the town’s population and with their leaders in Sarajevo, as well as to have the evacuation of civilians and men of military age carried out under guarantees from the office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees and international military observers.

“Do you remember discussing the option to allow whoever wanted to stay in the enclave, to stay there?” asked Tolimir.

“Probably yes; I do not exactly remember it,” Torlak replied, “but it is quite possible that that, too, was an issue of discussion.”

The witness repeated several times that, although he could not all the details of the Bosniak demands contained in Tolimir’s report, he generally remembered the ones raised by the defendant.

On July 14, the wartime presidency in Zepa decided not to continue the negotiations.

Asked by Tolimir whether this decision was taken after direction from the authorities in Sarajevo, Torlak said he could not remember. However, he did recall receiving a note from Sarajevo about how “there should be no negotiations with the aggressor”, as the Bosnian Serbs were expected to ultimately demand the town’s surrender.

Tolimir said he informed his own military superiors of the negotiations, and they had refused to countenance consultations with Sarajevo. A deadline was given for a decision to be made the same day, “after which evacuation would begin, or else military action would begin”, he said.

The accused added that the Bosnian Serb army “guaranteed the evacuation of all civilians and military men who gave their weapons up, as well as guaranteeing security for the civilians who decided to accept the authority of Republika Srpska and stay in its territory”.

“Does this correctly restate what we negotiated on our meeting on July 13?” asked Tolimir.

“It does,” said the witness, “although I don’t remember you insisting on any one of these points during the meeting.”

The free passage for military personnel was conditioned on their exchange with VRS prisoners in Bosnian army prisons. Torlak said that “it was formulated like this at the end… first it was simply said that everyone could leave, but then the freedom of passage was conditioned on the release of VRS members imprisoned by Bosnian authorities”.

Torlak said he had no knowledge of ever having received any instructions from the Bosnian authorities in Sarajevo about what to do with Zepa and its inhabitants if it became impossible to defend them from Serb forces.

Asked by Tolimir whether “the ones who told Zepa to defend itself also promised any help”, Torlak said he did not know, but he could not rule out that some promises were made to this effect to Avdo Palic, the commander in charge of the enclave's defence.

Palic disappeared on July 27, after he went to negotiate the surrender of Zepa with Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, accompanied by UN peacekeepers. His remains were found in a mass grave near Zepa in 2001.

Both Tolimir and Hague indictee Mladic – who remains at large – are alleged to have been instrumental in the forcible removal of the Bosniak population from Zepa following the capture of nearby Srebrenica.

Judge Antoine Kesia-Mbe Mindua pointed out that Tolimir’s report on the negotiations “was apparently very important, because it raises the question of the transfer of population”.

He noted that “it raises the possibility for Muslim residents to decide whether they would stay in Zepa or not” and that Torlak had at one point during his testimony mentioned that there were around ten Muslim families who originally wanted to stay in the area.

“Let me try to understand: were these people forced to leave, or did they ultimately decide themselves that they would leave? Were they able to decide?” asked Judge Mindua.

The witness answered that the document in question referred to the first set of talks held on July 13, while the question of families who wanted to stay was not discussed until July 19, at a meeting where Torlak said he believed another member of Zepa’s leadership, Benjamin Kulovac, had raised the idea with Mladic.

“Therefore this offer of staying was only crystallised at that meeting,” he said. “But it is clear from the later course of events that this was not possible, and that everyone had left the Zepa enclave.”

“Did you, or anyone else from the wartime presidency, have contact with the civilian population on whether they wanted to stay or leave?” asked Judge Mindua.

Torlak answered that he had been “a sort of stranger in town” and had no close contact with the local population.

“These conditions were communicated in this form, by my colleague I just mentioned, Benjamin Kulovac – he was a local. But it was a very specific atmosphere, everybody was thinking about making their own ends meet, so I don’t remember any specific activity [by] the wartime presidency.”

The first indictment against Tolimir was presented in February 2005, and he was arrested on May 2007. In December 2009, he pleaded not guilty to all counts.

The trial continues next week.

Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained journalist in Sarajevo.