Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 8, 1995 TAG: 9508080069
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Newsday
DATELINE: TUZLA, BOSNIA-HERZEGOVINA LENGTH: Medium
Refugees interviewed by Newsday said Mladic repeatedly declared his intention to kill as many Muslims as possible, in particular able-bodied men, and at one point encouraged his troops to rape the young women of Srebrenica.
``There was a major atrocity,'' said John Shattuck, the assistant secretary of state for human rights. His own interviews with more than a dozen survivors from Srebrenica and its sister enclave of Zepa turned up ``substantial new evidence of genocide and crimes against humanity,'' Shattuck told Newsday. ``Mladic's involvement is unquestionable. He was omnipresent.''
The reported murders and disappearances following Mladic's conquest of Srebrenica would rank among the largest-scale atrocities of a war that almost from the beginning in April 1992 has shocked the world's conscience.
Mladic has denied he has done anything wrong. After being indicted Aug. 1 by an international war crimes tribunal for genocide and crimes against humanity, he told reporters, ``I got used to that. I am just a man who defends his people.'' He said charges of rape are unfounded because ``We Serbs are too picky'' and would not be attracted to Muslim women taken by force.
He has said men and boys seized by Serb forces are ``war criminals'' and has not otherwise accounted for the large numbers of missing people.
Refugees told Newsday, human rights investigators and Shattuck that Mladic appeared daily before thousands of refugees who fled July 11 to the supposed protection of Dutch peacekeepers in Potocari, six miles from Srebrenica. He arrived in a luxury sedan or on horseback, and sometimes distributed chocolate to the children.
On or about July 12 he announced the ``feast'' of blood, according to Nedzida Sadikovic, who said she was present at the event.
According to her account, Mladic exclaimed, ``There are so many,'' as he spotted the large number of men and boys in the crowd of several thousand refugees.``It is going to be a `meze' [a long, delectable feast]. There will be blood up to your knees.''
He then nodded at the many young women in the crowd.
``Beautiful. Keep the good ones over there. Enjoy them,'' he told his troops, according to Sadikovic.
Sadikovic, 42, who fled to Srebrenica from her village of Bilaca in 1991, said that each night, young women were removed from the building they stayed in on the Potocari factory grounds and were not seen again. Men and boys from 16 to 60 were led away, never to return.
A day or so later, at a different location, Mladic directly threatened to execute more than 4,000 Muslim men and boys captured by his troops while trying to flee the region on foot. Appearing at the outdoor soccer stadium in the Serb-occupied town of Nova Kasaba, Mladic first assured his captives he would protect them. Then he switched his tone, denouncing the Bosnian army troops for killing 70 Serb soldiers in a battle over Mladic's home village.
``For every one of mine, 1,000 of yours are going to die,'' he said, according to Smail Hodzic, 63, a refugee from Cerska, who was in the crowd. A tape recounting his ordeal was obtained by Newsday. Hodzic also was interviewed by Shattuck, and gave a statement to Globus, the independent Zagreb weekly.
At least 2,000 Muslim men and boys were subsequently shot that evening, according to Hodzic's account. He survived by falling at the first volley of machine-gun shots beneath a man who was killed. Hodzic said he waited for hours and then crawled over 200 bodies toward the nearby woods. He and two others who had escaped made their way on foot to government territory, an 11-day trek.
Sadikovic was one of 10 refugees interviewed by Newsday from among the thousands of Srebrenica refugees who have flooded the Tuzla region. Hodzic and other witnesses to mass executions are being protected by the Bosnian police and are expected to testify before the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands.
According to Tuzla Mayor Selim Beslagic, 10,000 or more of the 42,000 residents of Srebrenica are missing. Besides the 31,000 refugees in Tuzla, the International Red Cross has been able to locate only 164 survivors from Srebrenica, in a Serb detention camp in Batkovic.
by CNB