Bosnian Serb Enters Plea of Not Guilty

A Bosnian Serb army officer pleaded not guilty Tuesday at the Yugoslav war crimes tribunal to charges of murdering Muslims in a U.N.-declared “safe area” in 1995.

Lt. Col. Dragan Jokic is charged with four counts of crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war in the July 1995 massacre of Muslim men and boys in the town of Srebrenica. He was stationed near the U.N. enclave during the 3 1/2-year war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Jokic, 44, has been held at the U.N. detention unit in the seaside village of Scheveningen since last Wednesday. He was flown to the Netherlands after turning himself in at the court’s office in the Bosnian town of Banja Luka.

Jokic nervously clenched his fists as U.N. Judge Liu Daqun of China asked him to enter his plea to counts of extermination, murder and persecution.

“Not guilty,” he replied in Serbo-Croatian.

Prosecutors allege that Jokic was the chief engineer of the Zvornik Brigade when thousands of Muslims were murdered toward the end of the conflict in the area of Srebrenica, where the United Nations had offered Muslims its protection from a Serbian onslaught.

The indictment says Jokic, a major at the time, assisted in the massacre and the subsequent burial of victims by providing the army with excavators, spotlights and communication devices.

He also issued or transmitted reports to superiors on the overall murder operation, according to the indictment.

Jokic served under Bosnian Serb Gen. Radislav Krstic. Krstic was convicted of genocide this month and sentenced to 46 years in prison. It was the first genocide conviction handed down by the court.

In the Srebrenica area, more than 7,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys were rounded up and executed in the military’s effort to create a greater Serbian state empty of non-Serbs.