“Scorpions” case nears end

Belgrade, December 18 (Source: B92) - The trial of the five men accused of committing the 1995 Trnovo crime enters its final stages this week with closing arguments.

The five members of the paramilitary Scorpions (“Škorpioni“) unit are accused of having murdered six prisoners in Godinjska Bara near Trnvo, Bosnia, on July 16 or 17, 1995, during the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

At the start of the trial on December 20, 2005, the first accused, Scorpions commander Slobodan Medić, rejected the indictment charging him with having ordered the killings.

Only the second accused, Pero Petrašević, has pleaded guilty of having participated in the executions. He told the court he killed one of the Srebrenica Muslims from the group, as well as that the orders came from Medić.

Petrašević told the court on February 21 that the first accused told him on the morning of the crime to gather a few men and “go and kill the captured Muslim soldiers”, at the same time ordering another of the men standing trial, Slobodan Stojković, to get a camera and have it recorded.

Special war crimes prosecution has issued the indictment against the Scorpions based on the video footage of the executions made by the unit’s members, which was first showed in public at the Milošević trial, in the Hague in June last year.

The victims were Safet Fejzić (17), Azmir Alishpahić (17), Sidik Saltić (36), Smail Ibrahimović (35) and Saib Salkić (20), while the sixth victim remains unidentified.

The trial, presided over by Judge Gordana Božilović-Petrović, will continue in Belgrade’s Special Court on Wednesday, December 20.

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