Eurasia Press & News
Former Bosnian Serb policeman Dragomir Andan testified that his military leader Ratko Mladic told him in 1992 that his biggest problem was fighting to rein in paramilitary groups.
Andan, a former police inspector at the Bosnian Serb Interior Ministry, testified at Mladic’s war crimes trial in The Hague on Friday that in July 1992, he was told by the Bosnian Serb Army headquarters to go to the Zvornik area in order to fight a paramilitary unit called the Zute Ose (Yellow Wasps).
He said that he then went to a meeting at the headquarters and Mladic came into the room and told him: “Welcome to the club of honest men.”
“He asked me to report on the situation in Zvornik, Bijeljina and Brcko. When I finished, he said that Republika Srpska’s biggest problem was fighting against paramilitary formations,” Andan told the court.
“He said that we cannot stabilise the frontline until we settle accounts with the paramilitaries, who have one goal, and that is looting and expelling innocent non-Serb civilians,” he said.
He added that Mladic told him that the police’s role was to ensure safety for all non-Serb civilians.
“Mladic said that this was the worst war that existed, because we were fighting people who speak the same language. He said that we have to be aware that our role is to take care that all the Muslims and Croats who are on the territory of Republika Srpska – who did not harm Serbian people – must be protected. He told me that we had to take into account the Geneva Convention,” he said.
Mladic is on trial for terrorising the residents of Sarajevo, genocide in Srebrenica and seven other municipalities, the persecution of Bosniaks and Croats throughout the country and taking UN peacekeepers hostage.
The trial continues.
