Serbs on trial for filmed execution

THE main suspect in a landmark trial of five Serb militiamen charged with the videotaped execution of six Bosnian Muslims said he would have killed the soldier who filmed it if he knew it would become public.

The suspects at the trial, which opened yesterday, were charged after the June airing of the gruesome 1995 video showing six civilians being taken from a truck, tied, lined up on a hillside near Srebrenica and sprayed with machine gun fire.

The five face up to 40 years in jail if found guilty. Serbia has abolished the death penalty.

None of the defendants entered a plea because it is not envisaged by the Serbian judicial procedure. Instead, the judge began questioning the indictees, starting with main defendant Slobodan Medic.

Medic, commander of the dreaded Serb “Scorpions” paramilitary unit, showed no remorse, saying if he had known the footage would become public, he would have “killed like a rabbit” the Serb soldier filming.

As many as 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were killed when Bosnian Serb troops overran Srebrenica in 1995 in Europe’s worst mass killing since World War II.

Medic insisted he did not order the executions but could not control soldiers eager to kill rival Muslims as revenge for their own families. “I think I did everything the best I could,” Medic said.

The footage was first shown in June at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

“I hope justice will be served for those monsters,” said Sajma Saltic, whose brother Sadik, aged 36, was among the six executed.

The indictment in Belgrade said the Scorpions numbered about 500 and fought three times in Bosnia during the 1992-95 war.