Bosnian-Serb general pleads not guilty

A Bosnian-Serb general pleaded not guilty today at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal to charges stemming from the 1995 massacre of thousands of Muslims at Srebrenica.

A second general sought more time before responding to the indictment.

Radivoje Miletic and Milan Gvero both turned themselves in to UN tribunal officials in the last week.

Gvero, 67, pleaded not guilty to all five counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war.

“I can say as a responsible person that I did not so much as kill a sparrow during the war,” he told Judge Carmel Agius.

“I am a calm person by nature and I am sure the truth will soon come to light,” he said. “I will do my best to assist this tribunal to come to the truth.”

Miletic, 57, said he hadn’t understood the allegations in his indictment, postponing his plea by up to a month.

A third Bosnian-Serb officer, Zdravko Tolimir, was named in the same indictment and reportedly was in negotiations with the Serb government to give himself up to UN authorities.

Miletic heatedly contested the judge’s use of the word “surrender” in his decision to come to The Hague.

“I didn’t surrender. I came here voluntarily. I am a general and I didn’t surrender to anyone,” he said, speaking in Serbian through an interpreter.

The men complained that they had not immediately been able to appoint lawyers of their choice to represent them in court.

They will stand trial on charges related to the deaths of more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslims in the worst civilian massacre in Europe since the Second World War.

An indictment issued against them on February 10 accuses them of five counts of murder; persecutions on political, racial and religious grounds; inhumane acts and deportation of Muslim refugees.

Miletic, the Bosnian-Serb Army’s wartime deputy chief of staff, surrendered on Monday. Gvero, assistant commander for morale, legal, and religious affairs, arrived last week.

They are being held responsible as commanding officers for the criminal acts of subordinates involved in the mass executions and abuse of Muslim prisoners.

They allegedly took part in a criminal plot, “the common purpose of which was to force the Muslim population out of the Srebrenica and Zepa enclaves (in Bosnia) to areas outside the control of the Republika Srpska.”

Several Bosnian-Serbs have been convicted by the tribunal for the crimes in Srebrenica, the first genocide on European soil since the Holocaust under the Nazis.

The two most-wanted suspects, former Bosnian-Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and wartime commander Gen. Ratko Mladic, remain at large.

The genocide of Muslims unfolded during a week of bloodshed at the end of the 1992-95 Bosnian war in an area that had been declared a safe area by the United Nations.

Serbian forces separated men from women and the elderly and took them off to execution sites.

Their bodies were dumped in mass graves.