Witness testifies on exhumation of 2,500 Srebrenica victims in Karadzic trial

A prosecution witness in the trial of wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic on Thursday testified before the United Nations war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia on exhumation of 2,500 victims killed by Serb forces in eastern town of Srebrenica in July 1995.

Australian archeologist Richard Wright, who headed exhumation teams in 1998/99, said 2,500 victims were exhumed from 21 mass graves and all bodies wore “exclusively civilian clothes”.

Cross-examining the witness, Karadzic, who is defending himself, suggested that 2,000 victims may have been Muslim soldiers who were killed in fighting, but Wright insisted there were no corpses in uniforms.

Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic have been indicted on eleven counts of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity allegedly committed by forces under their command during Bosnia’s 1992-1995 war.