Newly discovered video footage of Srebrenica massacre presented at The Hague
Potentially crippling to Milosevic's denials of any Serbian involvement in the Srebrenica massacre
Excerpted from the Coalition for International Justice website (www.cij.org)

Yesterday the Prosecution [at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia in The Hague] presented chilling video footage in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic. During its cross examination of defense witness police General Obrad Stevanovic, the Prosecution played several clips in court of what it claims are Muslim prisoners from Srebrenica being executed by a paramilitary unit called the "Scorpions" in 1995. The Scorpions, the Prosecution alleges, were under the command of the Serbian Ministry of Internal Affairs (MUP), which oversaw state security and policing in Serbia.

[To view RealVideo, go to Domovina.net  June 1, 2005. Scroll ahead to 2:35:20]

The video, if authenticated and admitted, is potentially crippling to Milosevic's denials of any Serbian involvement in the Srebrenica massacre which claimed upwards of 7,500 lives in July of 1995.

What the tape shows
The opening segment showed the "Scorpion" unit receiving a blessing from an Orthodox priest. The personnel, all wearing black uniforms and red berets stand at attention while the rite is being performed. The next clip showed the men en route to the Republika Srpska – one clip showed the unit gathered around buses in front a sign reading "Pale" – the Bosnian Serb wartime "capital" overlooking Sarajevo. A date stamp on the footage revealed that these segments were filmed around the 25-26 of June 1995, only two and a half weeks before the UN-declared "safe area" of Srebrenica was overrun on 11 July.

The next batch of footage showed a group of about six men, hands bound behind their backs piled up in the back of a truck. An armed guard is seen kicking one of the bound men in the head and voices are heard mocking the helpless men as cry-babies (the verb kmeziti was used). No date stamp was visible on this portion of the tape. The bound men were then ordered off the back of the truck by men dressed in black fatigues, some wearing red berets and others in camouflage flak vests. A voice can be heard shouting in frustration that the battery was running low on the video recorder. The bound men were ordered to lie in a ditch by the side of the road and the lorry then drove off. Perhaps in response to a plea to wait, a voice could be heard telling the bound men that "when you were killing Serbs you didn't wait."

The bound men, all dressed in civilian clothing, some with blue shirts, one barefoot, were then marched through a grassy area in single file, all looking dejected and already lifeless. One by one they were shot with short bursts of rifle fire. As each one was shot, the next stepped forward and was shot -- collapsing after a second of standing listlessly upright. Four men were executed in this manner, and two survivors were instructed to move the corpses. Again, a voice is heard complaining that the battery is running low on the camera.

The value of the video and the RS MUP documents goes far beyond simply impeaching the testimony of Stevanovic. They speak to the core of the indictment’s claims that Milosevic “participated in the formation, financing, supply, support and direction of special forces of the Republic of Serbia Ministry of Internal Affairs….[and] Serbian irregular forces or paramilitaries. These forces participated in the execution of the joint criminal enterprise through the commission of crimes….” including genocide.