By SAMIR KRILIC, Associated Press Writer 6/3/05
SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina - Shaken and in tears, Nura Alispahic said Friday she turned on the TV to watch the news — then saw a gruesome video of the shooting deaths of her teenage son, Azmir, and five other Muslims from Srebrenica by Serb forces in July 1995.
"I saw with my own eyes when these animals killed my son. He was only 16 1/2. No one can understand how I feel," she told The Associated Press.
Bosnian television broadcast the amateur video, apparently made by Serb troops, on its late-evening news Wednesday.
It showed six Muslim civilians taken from a truck with their hands tied behind their backs, with paramilitary forces yelling "Yalla! Yalla!" — a term used by Bosnian farmers to herd livestock.
The victims were lined up on a hillside. Four were shot — one by one — in the backs. Two others were ordered to carry the bodies into a barn, where they, too, were killed.
"I saw him. He was second in the row. They were pushing him," his mother said. "He turns, and I see him and it was my Azmir.
"Seconds later, they shoot him. He falls," said Alispahic, 60, sitting beside her daughter, Magbula, in their room in a refugee camp near the northern town of Tuzla.
Her other son, Admir, also was killed during the war. He had been wounded in Srebrenica and evacuated to Tuzla. Shortly after he was released from the hospital, he was killed during a shelling of the town.
As many as 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed when Bosnian Serb troops overran the eastern Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica nearly 10 years ago in Europe's worst mass killing since World War II.
The video was first shown Wednesday at the U.N. war crimes court in The Hague, Netherlands.
The prosecution introduced it during hearings in the trial of former Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic, indicted for his alleged role in atrocities during the Balkan wars, including the Srebrenica massacre.U.N. prosecutors contend the killings were carried out by the Serb paramilitary unit known as the Scorpions somewhere on Mount Treskavica near the wartime Bosnian Serb capital, Pale.
The Scorpions allegedly were under orders from Serb police in Belgrade and the link could directly tie Milosevic with the crimes committed in Bosnia.
Carla del Ponte, the chief prosecutor for the U.N. war crimes tribunal, said Friday in Sarajevo that her court has more video of Srebrenica killings.
"I have other video material but as you know, it is public only when we can provide it in the court during the trials. At the next trial, we will be able to show such material," she said after meeting with representatives of the Mothers of Srebrenica Association.
Several Serb TV stations broadcast the video Wednesday, and it could change the way Serbs think of the wartime killings. A somber pro-Western President Boris Tadic told the nation the images were "proof of a monstrous crime committed against persons of a different religion. And the guilty had walked as free men until now, walked among us."
In Belgrade, many expressed shock and disgust. Some believed the video was a trick and would not speak about it.
"I was profoundly shaken," said businessman Slobodan Krivokuca.
Azmir's body was found buried in a mass grave in 1999 by the Bosnian Federation Commission for the Search of Missing Persons. He was identified and reburied in 2003 at the Memorial Cemetery in Potocari, near Srebrenica.
Police in neighboring Serbia-Montenegro have arrested at least eight men they say are shown in the video, said Rasim Ljajic, head of the Serbia-Montenegro government body in charge of cooperation with the U.N. war crimes tribunal.
Munira Subasic, a representative of the Association of Mothers of Srebrenica, told AP in Sarajevo that the other victim recognized by his mother from the video was 17-year-old Safet Fejzic.
The mother and the family were too shocked to speak to the media, Subasic said.
She added that the Mothers of Srebrenica association planned to meet with the chief prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes tribunal, Carla del Ponte, who was visiting Bosnia on Friday.
"We will demand that she gives us the entire two hour-long footage of the killings," Subasic said. "Maybe someone else can recognize their next of kin as well."
She said they also want the entire video broadcast worldwide. "It is very important to show to the world the crimes committed here. Such genocide cannot and must not be unpunished."
Squeezing her shaking hands, Nura Alispahic remembered the last time she saw Azmir.
"Serbs were entering Srebrenica, and Azmir came back to give me a kiss before he fled," she said, sobbing. "I had a feeling then that I would never see him again."
11 Srebrenica suspects arrested after execution video shocks Serbia\
BELGRADE (AFP) - Eleven former Serb paramilitary troops have been arrested in Serbia and Bosnia for allegedly taking part in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre of some 8,000 Muslims, after a gruesome video tipped off prosecutors, officials said.
A spokeswoman for the Serbian war crimes prosecutor's office said 10 suspects were identified from a video of the execution of six men which was shown Wednesday during the trial of former Yugoslav president
Slobodan Milosevic at the UN tribunal at The Hague.The video, later broadcast on Serbian television, has shocked the former Yugoslav republic where many people continue to deny the 1995 massacre in eastern Bosnia took place.
"The police have arrested 10 people suspected of having participated in the execution of civilians in Srebrenica," spokeswoman Jasna Jankovic told B92 television, adding that further arrests were possible.
She said the arrests began hours after the video was shown for the first time during Milosevic's trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague.
Officials in Bosnia said another suspect had been detained near Sarajevo.
Some 8,000 Muslim men and boys were executed when Bosnian Serb forces and irregular Serbian police units backed by the Milosevic regime overran the UN-protected enclave near the end of Bosnia's 1992-1995 war.
Considered the worst atrocity in Europe since World War II, the massacre has led to genocide charges against suspects including Milosevic, former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic and his military commander, Ratko Mladic.
Karadzic and Mladic, seen as two of the principle architects of the Serb wartime strategy of "ethnic cleansing", remain at large in the Balkans with the help of a strong underground support network of hardcore nationalists.
Jankovic said the six males shown in the video being abused and executed by members of a Serbian paramilitary unit known as the Scorpions were from Srebrenica but they were murdered near the central Bosnian town of Trnovo.
"The six victims, four of whom were minors and two were men aged at least 30, were all from Srebrenica and they have been identified," she said.
The video, which was filmed by one of the soldiers, has forced many Serbs to confront for the first time the reality of what occurred in Bosnia during the neighbouring former Yugoslav republic's bitter inter-ethnic war.
Serbian Prime Minister
Vojislav Kostunica, speaking after a meeting with visiting UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte on Thursday, described it as "shocking and terrible".President Boris Tadic said the gruesome video was clear evidence of the "monstrous crimes" committed by Serb forces in Bosnia, and offered to travel to Srebrenica to "bow to the innocent victims".
"The monsters who committed this crime must be in prison... We are responsible both to our nation and to the innocent victims of other nations," he said.
Survivors of Srebrenica dismissed Tadic's comments as political. "It is horrible that it takes a video recording for them to recognize that genocide was committed in Srebrenica," said survivor Sabra Kolenovic.
Del Ponte said the arrests, which reportedly include former Scorpions commander Slobodan Medic, were a "brilliant operation" by the Serbian authorities but called for similar action against Karadzic and Mladic.
She said UN prosecutors had further video footage which would be used as evidence at The Hague, but declined to elaborate.
Video forces Serbs to admit massacreOfficials unable to deny 1990s crimesJune 4, 2005
BY KATARINA KRATOVAC
BELGRADE, Serbia-Montenegro -- The gruesome video shown this week of the 1995 killing of six skinny young Bosnian Muslims by Serb paramilitaries is forcing Serb leaders to finally acknowledge their country's role in the worst massacre in Europe since World War II. The video of the July 1995 killings near Srebrenica mark the first time most Serbs have seen such images and could change the way the nation thinks of the slaughter in Bosnia, where Serb troops overran the enclave and killed 8,000 Muslim men and boys. The images prompted Serbian officials to acknowledge publicly that war crimes were committed by Serbs during the wars in the Balkans in the 1990s. "Everything burst -- the whole bubble of hiding evidence and denying crimes -- within the 10 minutes it took to broadcast the video," said Natasa Kandic, a human rights activist from the Belgrade-based Humanitarian Law Fund. The video was first shown Wednesday by prosecutors at the UN war-crimes tribunal at The Hague, Netherlands, at the trial of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. He is being tried on charges in connection with his alleged role in atrocities during the Balkan wars, including genocide for the massacre at Srebrenica. Serbian President Boris Tadic somberly told the nation the images were "proof of a monstrous crime committed against persons of a different religion. And the guilty had walked as free men until now, walked among us." Police arrested 10 suspects after the images were shown on Belgrade television. Four remained in custody Friday. The video, apparently made by Serb troops, shows men in camouflage uniforms wearing red berets emblazoned with the Serbian flag taking the six prisoners -- some still in their teens -- from a truck, hands tied behind their backs. Four were then shot, one by one, in the back. They slumped into the tall grass, and the two others were ordered to carry the bodies into a barn where they, too, were killed. At times, the Serb troops cursed and sneered at the prisoners. |