ICTY: TRIAL OF NASER ORIC STARTS ON OCTOBER 6

THE HAGUE, September 24 (FENA/Hina) – The trial of former commander of defence in Srebrenica Naser Oric before the Hague Tribunal will start on October 6 and is expected to last approximately one year, spokesperson for the ICTY said on Thursday.

Oric (37) is charged with war crimes committed by Bosniak forces against Serbs in the broader Srebrenica area in 1992 and 1993.

The indictment states that between May 1992 and March 1993 RBiH Army forces under his command carried out various operations against the Bosnian Serb Army, which held Muslim enclaves in East Bosnia in encirclement. In those operations RBiH Army forces burned and in other ways destroyed and looted at least 50 villages with dominantly Serb population in Bratunac, Srebrenica and Skelani municipalities forcing thousands of Serbs to flee that area.

In the trial of Slobodan Milosevic and other processes these events were often mentioned as a cause, if not justification, for the genocide carried out by Serb forces following the capture of Srebrenica in July 1995 when some 8.000 Bosniak prisoners were killed.

Oric was arrested by SFOR in Tuzla on April 11 2003 and in his first appearance before the judges he pleaded not guilty.

At least two men from the western press viewed Naser Oric's videos of atrocities against Serbs while he narrated what was seen. I wonder if these guys were at the same "viewing session"? There might have been other western pressmen who chose not to write about what they saw.

I would have these men testify in court and ask if there were other people with them viewing those tapes.

http://www.bannerofliberty.com/OS3-99MQC/3-25-1999.1.html

Bill Schiller of the Toronto Star had this to say about Nasir Oric who showed Schiller images of himself decapitating Serbian victims. 'I met him (Oric) in January, 1994, in his own home in Serb-surrounded Srebrenica. On a cold and snowy night, I sat in his living room watching a shocking video version of what might have been called Nasir Oric's Greatest Hits.' 'We ambushed them,' he said when a number of dead Serbs appeared on the screen. The next sequence of dead bodies had been done in by explosives: 'We launched those guys to the moon,' Oric boasted. When the footage of a bullet-marked ghost town appeared without any visible bodies, Oric hastened to announce: 'We killed 114 Serbs there.' Nasir Oric has not been indicted for his war crimes in Srebrenica, apparently, Mr. Cohen, you would have your readers believe those innocent Serb victims deserved it. According to you and the Washington Post those Serbs don't deserve any justice either.

http://www.balkanpeace.org/cib/bos/boss/oric/oric01.shtml

SREBRENICA, Bosnia: Nasir Oric's war trophies don't line the wall of his comfortable apartment-- one of the few with electricity in this besieged Muslim enclave stuck in the forbidding mountains of eastern Bosnia. They're on a videocassette tape: burned Serb houses and headless Serb men, their bodies crumpled in a pathetic heap.

"We had to use cold weapons that night," Oric explains as scenes of dead men sliced by knives roll over his 21-inch Sony. "This is the house of a Serb named Ratso," he offers as the camera cuts to a burned-out ruin. "He killed two of my men, so we torched it. Tough luck."

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