Bosnian hero denies being war criminal

A Bosnian Muslim commander who defended the UN declared safe area of Srebrenica from Serb troops during the 1992-95 Bosnian war today denied he committed atrocities.

Naser Oric, 36, was charged by UN prosecutors in The Hague with murder, cruel treatment, wanton destruction and plunder in eastern Bosnia.

He was captured last week in Bosnia by Nato-led forces outside his home in Tuzla and taken to the US detention unit in the Netherlands.

“Your honours ... I am not guilty,” Oric said to each count, looking solemn in a grey suit and shirt as he stood before the judge.

Oric is widely regarded as a hero by Muslims in Bosnia for defending his people from Serb attackers who later carried out the mass murder of around 8,000 boys and men in July 1995.

He was awarded the Golden Lily” the Bosnian army’s highest honour.

His case underscores the ambiguous stance to the tribunal in the Balkans, where one man’s villain is another’s hero.

Bosnian Serbs blame him for the killings of about 2,000 Serbs from villages around Srebrenica, including the so-called Bloody Christmas massacre in January 1993, when dozens of women and children died in the village of Kravice.

During the siege of Srebrenica, Oric’s fighters broke through weak spots in the Serbian front lines, raiding surrounding Serb villages to get weapons and food to the enclave’s starving inhabitants.

The indictment alleges that Oric and his forces tortured and beat Serb prisoners at the Srebrenica police station and pillaged some 15 nearby Serb villages and hamlets.

“In some instances, prisoners were beaten to death. Physical abuse included beatings by various objects including wooden sticks, wooden poles, steel pipes, metal bars, baseball bats, rifle butts, bare fists, kicking with boots and forced teeth extractions with rusty pliers,” the indictment says.

The Srebrenica massacres were Europe’s worst bloodshed since the Second Word War II. Dutch UN peacekeepers, in charge of protecting Srebrenica, were helpless to prevent it.

Before the war, Oric – a police officer by profession – served in Kosovo and in Belgrade where he was a bodyguard for former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

He disappeared in 1991, to resurface as a Muslim commander in Bosnia.