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Prosecution Says Krstic Masterminded Srebrenica Massacre
THE HAGUE, June 26 (News Agencies) - Bosnian Serb general Radislav Krstic was the mastermind behind the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, the prosecutor of the U.N. war crimes tribunal alleged Tuesday on the first day of closing arguments in the case against Krstic.
Prosecutor Mark Harmon told the court that Krstic was instrumental in "planning, instigating and ordering" mass executions in the Srebrenica area that was under the control of his army unit, the Drina corps.
Krstic faced charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. For the first time, the prosecutor for the International Criminal Court for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) is demanding a genocide conviction on charges related to the capture of the Muslim enclave.
Krstic faces a maximum possible sentence of life imprisonment.
The former right-hand man of then Bosnian Serb army chief Ratko Mladic, Krstic was second-in-command of the Drina corps, which led the attack on Srebrenica, a U.N. safe area in eastern Bosnia under the protection of Dutch U.N. soldiers.
Some 7,000 to 8,000 Muslims were murdered or disappeared from the enclave after Serb troops entered the town on July 11, 1995, in killings described as Europe's worst atrocity since World War II.
On the first day of closing arguments, Harmon focused on the large-scale mass executions. He meticulously described how the office of the prosecutor located many mass execution sites in Krstic's area of responsibility, through testimony from survivors.
To back up the testimony Harmon displayed aerial photographs of the sites several days before and after the executions took place that showed large mounds of disturbed earth where victims were buried in trenches.
The court saw pictures of bodies recovered from the sites with blindfolds still in place and hands bound.
Harmon said many of the mass burial sites had been disturbed and bodies transferred to different secondary gravesites in an effort to conceal evidence.
The prosecutor showed a document signed by Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadic ordering his troops to do their utmost to make life impossible for the Muslims remaining in the enclave. Muslims were denied food and water, people were killed at random to incite fear, and men and women were separated.
The court saw a heart-wrenching video of a woman from Srebrenica telling ICTY investigators how she was told to walk in a line towards a bus to take her out of the enclave when soldiers took her young son. Krstic, dressed in a black suit, showed no emotion when the tearful account was shown.
Harmon's closing arguments were scheduled to continue through Wednesday, ending with the announcement of the actual sentence the prosecution is seeking in this case.
The defense will plead its case on Thursday and Friday. The court is expected to hand down a verdict before the end of July.
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