prijava
SARAJEVO, November 2 (FENA) - In the closing arguments at the retrial of the Bosnian Army’s former commander in Srebrenica, Naser Orić, the prosecution said that he should be punished for committing crimes against prisoners of war.
The prosecution told the state court in Sarajevo on Friday that the defense had not managed to refute evidence that Naser Orić and his Bosnian Army subordinate Sabahudin Muhić killed three Serb captives in 1992.
Orić and Muhić are accused of committing the crimes against the prisoners of war in the villages of Zalazje and Kunjerac in the Srebrenica municipality and in the village of Lolići in the of Bratunac municipality.
Prosecutor Miroslav Janjić argued that defense attempts to undermine the testimony of a protected witness codenamed O-1 had failed.
“The first defense thesis was that the prosecution based its indictment on witness O-1, which is not true… Its second thesis referred to the credibility of witness O-1. The defense tried to prove that this witness was not credible, but it did not succeed,” Janjić said.
Witness O-1 said that he saw Orić kill a captive in Zalazje and both defendants kill the other two captives.
Janjić also said that defense witnesses were not credible when they claimed that Orić did not participate in the Bosnian Army operation in the village of Kunjerac, because the defendant himself, while testifying before the Hague Tribunal, said he took part in that operation.
The retrial is being held after the state court’s appeals chamber quashed the original acquittal of Orić and Muhić in June this year. They deny the charges.
The original trial was highly controversial because Orić is seen as a hero by many Bosniaks for his role in defending Srebrenica in the years before the 1995 massacres, while some Serbs have claimed that the charges against him should have been more severe.
Before the original trial started, the defense asked the UN tribunal in The Hague to order a halt to the proceedings against Orić, arguing that he had already been tried for and acquitted of war crimes in Srebrenica by the Hague court and should not stand trial for the same crimes twice.
The Hague Tribunal rejected the request, with the judge saying that “the murder charges in the Bosnian indictment fundamentally differ from the murder charges in the Hague indictment with respect to the alleged victims and the nature, time and location of the alleged crime”.
The defense will present its closing statements on November 9, BIRN reports.
(FENA) S. R.
