Soldiers Involved in Massacre are Key
Witnesses For War Crimes Trials
(Belgrade) The U.S. war crimes investigator says he believes Belgrade will hand over to the U.N. war crimes tribunal two suspects held on suspicion of having committed atrocities in the "safe area" of Srebrenica last year. John Shattuck told reporters after meeting Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic that he had made "very clear" that the two men must be turned over if there was to be full cooperation with the tribunal. "I believe they will be," Shattuck said.
Shattuck said he had just visited Radoslav Kremenovic and Drazen Erdemovic, arrested in the northeastern Serbian town of Novi Sad on March 3. "They are right now being questioned further by the investigators from the international war crimes tribunal," he said, adding: "The tribunal will open an office in Belgrade and will begin its work very shortly." He said he was given free access to the men who served as Bosnian Serb army soldiers at the time.
Admits Killing 70 Muslims in Srebrenica Massacre
Drazen Erdemovic, a Bosnian Croat, told Le Figaro that he believed he personally shot about 70 people to death under the order of drunken Bosnian Serb officers. "I tried to kill as few as possible," he said. Up to 8,000 Muslims went missing after Bosnian Serb forces overran the eastern Bosnian enclave in July 1995. Most are feared to have been massacred in what Western officials have called possibly the worst single atrocity in Europe since World War Two."They are very important witnesses from the information we have," tribunal's chief prosecutor Richard Goldstone told Reuterss Television during a visit to Bonn earlier in the day. The tribunal said both men were believed to be in a position to give evidence in the investigation into alleged atrocities committed during the Bosnian Serb takeover of Srebrenica and the events that followed.
Cooperation with the war crimes tribunal figures high on the Bosnia peace accord Milosevic signed in Dayton Ohio last November, together with presidents of Bosnia and Croatia. Despite verbal commitments, Belgrade has so far shown little enthusiasm to cooperate with the tribunal and has claimed its laws prohibited extradition of its citizens to other countries. But Shattuck indicated the possibility that Serbia would change its laws to enable it to hand over suspects.
"We have called upon President Milosevic to enact legislation in Serbia that would mandate full cooperation in the form of extradition of persons who are indicted for war crimes and we expect that it will be taken very seriously by President Milosevic," he said. The tribunal, created by the U.N. Security Council in 1993, is the first body of its kind since the Nuremberg and Tokyo war crimes trials after World War Two. It has so far indicted 53 people, six of them Croats and the rest Serbs, and is holding two suspects, Bosnian Serbs Dusan Tadic and General Djordje Djukic. A third detainee, Bosnian Serb army Colonel Aleksa Krsmanovic, has not been indicted.
Shattuck arrived in Belgrade accompanying new U.S. envoy in the Balkans, John Kornblum, who took over from Richard Holbrooke when he resigned last month.
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia from the United Nations
The Massacre of Muslims at Srebrenica from The Washington Post
Coalition for International Justice
Reports concerning human rights abuses in Bosnia published by Intac Access
Major War Criminals/Suspects from CalTech's Bosnia Site
Reports on War Crimes in the Former Yugoslavia from CalTech's Bosnia Site
Six Possible Grave Sites Identified By US Intelligence Agencies from The Christian Science Monitor
Exposing Europe's Worst Massacre Since the Holocaust from The Christian Science Monitor
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