Bosnian Serb Cites Fear in Not Reporting Massacre

A Bosnian Serb general on trial for genocide testified Wednesday that his superiors wanted to cover up the murder of thousands of Muslims and threatened his family in order to keep him quiet.

Gen. Radislav Krstic told the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia that he knew about mass executions by Serbian forces in July 1995 at the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica but did not investigate them.

“I learned about those events and did not take any measures,” Krstic said. He said he feared that his wartime chief of staff, Gen. Ratko Mladic, would harm him or his family if he took any action.

“Gen. Mladic was responsible for the crimes,” Krstic said, adding, “I feared him and his security forces.”

Mladic also has been indicted by the tribunal on charges of genocide but is not in custody.

Krstic, the highest-ranking Bosnian Serb military officer on trial, conceded that he failed in his duty as an officer to comply with his own army’s rules requiring the reporting of war crimes.

Toward the end of the 1992-95 Bosnian war, forces of the Bosnian Serb army’s Drina Corps overran the U.N.-declared “safe haven” of Srebrenica in eastern Bosnia, where about 30,000 Muslims had sought safety behind hundreds of Dutch peacekeepers.

On July 11, the haven fell victim to what prosecutors describe as a Serbian “ethnic cleansing” campaign that virtually wiped out its male Muslim population. According to Krstic’s indictment, at least 7,500 men and boys were killed or are believed missing and the rest of the refugees deported.

Krstic has pleaded innocent, saying he became Drina commander only after the massacre. He also denied that his troops participated in the executions.