Naser Oric

But Izo Tankic’s testimony also revealed the difficulties of dispensing justice in the besieged enclave.

During the Bosnian war Tankic, a quiet man in his forties, served as a judge at the High Court in Tuzla - the Muslim-controlled town closest to Srebrenica.

He indicated this week that no war crimes case was ever referred to his court, although it had formal jurisdiction over any serious crimes that were committed in the enclave.

Oric, 37, was the commanding officer of Srebrenica’s armed forces throughout the war. He is charged with failing to prevent or punish the soldiers under his command for crimes they allegedly committed in and around the enclave 1992 and 1993. These include the destruction and looting of Serb villages around Srebrenica, and the murder and mistreatment of detainees in the town's prison.

The prosecutors are trying to prove that Oric failed to order investigations into these crimes, and also to report them to the civil and military authorities.

But during cross-examination by the defence, Tankic told how many people found it difficult to respect the law and rules of procedure in Srebrenica - a town packed with starved refugees and cut off from the rest of the world from 1992-95.

At the time, there were only a handful of judges and a sole public prosecutor working in the enclave that housed some 40,000 people, and the justice system was effectively not working.

Prosecutor Patricia Sellers suggested to the witness that even in these circumstances, some pre-trial proceedings should have been carried out by the Srebrenica authorities, such as "securing the crime scene, on-site investigation, taking photographs of the scene of the crime and gathering potential evidence".

Tankic said this rarely happened, but he seemed to support the testimonies of previous witnesses at Oric's trial who claimed that Srebrenica was a "very chaotic place", in which regular procedures could not be applied.

He told the court that communication between the only public prosecutor in Srebrenica at the time, Dzuzida Akagic, and the Tuzla-based high prosecutor, who had jurisdiction to deal with serious crimes cases including war crimes "did not exist".

"Everything was blocked," he said.

The only way the Srebrenica prosecutor could communicate with the Tuzla court was by a makeshift radio, the witness claims, and "that's how all instructions from the higher prosecutor arrived" on how to proceed with certain cases.

Earlier witnesses have testified that Srebrenica’s residents desperately sought to get access to the radio, to convey messages such as demands for food and medicine and dramatic calls for help that were regularly broadcast on Bosnian radio and TV at that time.

The device was reportedly guarded by a soldier and could only be accessed with Oric’s permission, but the issue of access has not been substantiated in court.

On top of that, Tankic explained, the local prosecutor in Srebrenica "didn't have the authority to prosecute members of the army, and had to refer all these cases to the higher district military prosecutor in Tuzla".

Srebrenica was besieged at the time and no road travel outside the town was possible. "Thus, many cases were stuck in Srebrenica and no further steps were taken," he said.

Tankic also testified that attempts by the district military court in Tuzla to establish a department in Srebrenica and appoint two military judges to handle war crimes cases on the spot failed because "there were no [more] people with law degrees living in the town".

Another problem, according to Tankic, was the physical transfer of serious cases from Srebrenica to Tuzla where they were supposed to be tried. In fact, he claims, that was "mission almost impossible".

In order to prove that at least there was an effort to refer some war crimes cases to Tuzla, Oric's defence counsel John Jones reminded the witness of the case of a Muslim man, Emir Halilovic, who was charged with the murder of three Serbs in Srebrenica in 1993, and transferred to Tuzla for trial by the only means available - a United Nations helicopter.

According to the documents Jones presented in court, Halilovic's case was tried and completed in Tuzla, but he died of a brain tumour soon after the verdict was passed.

It was the only registered case of a Srebrenica inhabitant tried for war crimes during the war.

When Jones suggested to the witness that "the jurisdiction of Tuzla court over Srebrenica was only theoretical", he agreed, saying, "Yes, it was very difficult to exercise that in practice."

Another problem for the prosecution was the lack of any physical evidence, which disappeared in 1995 when the enclave was overrun by the Serb forces and its inhabitants expelled, while some 7,000 of its men and boys were later executed. The vast majority of documents were left in the court's basement in Srebrenica because "all the judges had to flee leaving the case files behind them".

He also didn't rule out the possibility that war crimes cases were in fact filed, “but never transferred to Tuzla, due to the fall of Srebrenica".

The trial continues next week.

Merdijana Sadovic is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.