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Srebrenica Wartime Commander Questioned By U.N.
SARAJEVO, April 2 (News Agencies) - The Bosnian Muslim wartime commander of Srebrenica enclave, the scene of the worst massacre of Bosnia's war, was questioned here Monday by U.N. war crimes investigators, a U.N. spokesman said.
"Naser Oric was in the [UN headquarters] building today. He was interviewed by investigators from The Hague tribunal," spokesman Douglas Coffman said.
He dismissed allegations by Srebrenica massacre survivors that Oric was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
"He came in voluntarily, he is not indicted," Coffman said adding that Oric was "simply interviewed as a part of an ongoing investigation."
Some 200 hundred survivors of the 1995 Srebrenica massacre gathered earlier Monday in front of U.N. headquarters in Sarajevo to protest Oric's reported indictment.
They claimed that Oric, commander of Srebrenica, turned himself in earlier in the day to officials of the ICTY, which has an office in the building.
According to protestors, Oric has been indicted secretly by the tribunal for crimes committed against ethnic Serbs in the mostly Muslim region of Srebrenica at the beginning of Bosnia's 1992-95 war.
The protestors, throwing stones and carrying banners that read "Where are 10,000 people from the protected enclave of Srebrenica?," eventually forced their way through the fence and reached the entrance. But local police pushed them back.
The angry protestors claimed that Oric would be arrested due to former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic's detention since "the international community now wants to found Bosnians [Muslims] to blame."
"I came to say who is guilty for genocide in Srebrenica, all mothers who lost their sons came here. We want justice. No Muslim from Srebrenica is guilty, not a single one," shouted Safeta Selimovic, one of the protestors.
Local media reported that Oric was on a secret ICTY indictment after the tribunal's chief prosecutor, Carla Del Ponte, announced during a recent visit here that new charges had been filed against Bosnians, including Muslims.
Oric, who left Srebrenica before a Serb offensive in 1995 which led to the worst massacre of the war, does not figure on the list of the ICTY's public indictments.
Some 7,000 Muslims are believed to have been executed after Serb forces captured the enclave in July 1995, which was proclaimed a safe haven under the protection of Dutch U.N. peacekeepers.
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