Naser Orić

Naser Orić
Orić during war Orić during war
Allegiance	Bosnia and Herzegovina
Years of service	1992 – 1995
Rank	Brigadier,
Unit	28th Division (2nd Corps)
Commands held	Commander in Srebrenica
Battles/wars	Bosnian War, Siege of Srebrenica, Siege of Žepa

Naser Orić, (born March 3, 1967), is a former Bosnian military officer who commanded the Army of the Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina forces in the Srebrenica enclave in Eastern Bosnia surrounded by Serb forces, during the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina. In 2006 he was convicted to imprisonment for 2 years by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in the Netherlands for failing to prevent the deaths of five and the mistreatment of eleven Bosnian Serb detainees during the period from late 1992 to early 1993 on the basis of superior criminal responsibility. He was acquitted on the other charges of wanton destruction and causing damage to civilian infrastructure beyond the realm of military necessity.

Career

Following secondary school Orić reported for conscription in the Yugoslav People's Army (JNA) in 1985/1986, where he served in a special unit for atomic and chemical defence. He left the JNA with the rank of Corporal.

In 1988, he completed a six month training course in Zemun and served in Savski Venac in Belgrade as a trainee policeman. As a member of the police unit for special actions, he had courses for two more years. In 1990, Naser Orić was deployed to Kosovo as a member of a Special Police unit of the Ministry of the Interior of the Republic of Serbia. Thereafter, he returned to Belgrade, where he became a bodyguard to Slobodan Milošević.

In August 1991, Orić was transferred to a police station in Ilidža, on the outskirts of Sarajevo, Bosnia. In late 1991, Orić was moved to the police station in Srebrenica, and in April 1992 he became the police chief of the Potočari police sub-station.

Territorial Defence (April 1992 - September 1992)

With the disintegration of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, a cadre staff consisting of former JNA officers began to prepare for the defence of Bosnia and Herzegovina. On 8 April 1992, the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina transformed the existing Socialist Republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina TO (Territorial Defence) into the TO of Bosnia and Herzegovina.

In mid-April 1992, the Potočari TO was established, and Orić became its Commander. In May 1992, members of the Crisis Staff of the TO Srebrenica appointed him as the Commander, which Sefer Halilovic, Chief of the Supreme Command Staff of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina (ABiH), officially confirmed in June. Orić also became a member of the War Presidency in Srebrenica upon its creation on 1 July.

Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina (September 1992 - 1995)

In September, 1992, the Srebrenica TO HQ was re-named the HQ Srebrenica Armed Forces. Orić remained the commander. Orić's command was further extended when he was appointed the Commander of the Joint Armed Forces of the Sub-Region Srebrenica in early November 1992. Now his command encompassed the geographical regions of several municipalities: Srebrenica, Bratunac, Vlasenica and Zvornik in Eastern Bosnia. Orić received a Certificate of Merit in April 1993.

On New Year's Day 1994, all units under the command of Orić were named the 8th Operative Group Srebrenica HQ, 2nd (Tuzla) Corps of the ABiH. On 12 July 1994, Orić was promoted to the rank of Brigadier, and sometime before the first of March he was awarded the "Golden Lily", the highest award given by the Chief of Staff of the Supreme Command of the ABiH.

In early 1995, the 8th Operative Group Srebrenica HQ was re-named the ABiH 2nd Corps 28th Mountain Division.

Orić in Srebrenica 1992-1995

Beginning of the war in Srebrenica

The Serbian takeover of the municipalities of Bratunac and Srebrenica signalled the beginning of large-scale ethnic cleansing. Following the Serb takeover of Srebrenica town on 10 April 1992, most of the Bosniak population fled to the surrounding area. Some of these who stayed were killed, while many others were arrested and deported. Meanwhile, in a number of villages around Srebrenica the Bosniak population began to organize local resistance groups. Orić was one of the leaders.

At the start, Orić found few supporters and his small group of militiamen only had hunting rifles and automatic rifles from the police armory in Srebrenica. Orić's first major attack on the Serbs took place on 20 April 1992 in Potocari, when his forces successfully ambushed a number of vehicles of the Arkan's Serb Volunteer Guard paramilitary group ("Tigers") and local Serbian police. Right after, the JNA started artillery assaults on Orić's stronghold of Potocari industrial area and surrounding villages.

By early May 1992 the Bosniak forces began to assault the Serbs in and around Srebrenica. On 6 May, Bosniak forces under Naser Orić carried out their first attack on a Serb village, Gniona, to the north of the town of Srebrenica. A leader of the Serb Democratic Party in Srebrenica, Goran Zekic, was killed in an ambush on 8 May. Soon thereafter Serbs began to flee Srebrenica or were driven out by Bosniak forces. Bosniak forces under Orić and other Bosniak commanders took control of Srebrenica on 9 May.

In the following days, Bosniaks who had been hiding in the woods emerged and gradually returned to their houses in Srebrenica. The Bosniak forces held the town for about three years after this, while almost all of the Serb inhabitants fled to Bratunac or elsewhere. The Bosnian Serb forces answered to these developments by killing Bosniaks in the village of Glogova on May 9 and in Bratunac on May 10 through May 13.

Role of Bosnian forces on the ground

A report requested by the 53rd session of the United Nations General Assembly and delivered to the 54th session addresses the conduct of Bosniak forces in Srebrenica.

Titled "Report of the Secretary-General pursuant to General Assembly resolution 53/35—The Fall of Srebrenica" , delivered on November 15, 1999, it states:

"Concerning the accusation that the Bosniaks did not do enough to defend Srebrenica, military experts consulted in connection with this report were largely in agreement that the Bosniaks could not have defended Srebrenica for long in the face of a concerted attack supported by armour and artillery."

"Many have accused the Bosniak forces of withdrawing from the enclave as the Serb forces advanced on the day of its fall. However, it must be remembered that on the eve of the final Serb assault the Dutchbat Commander urged the Bosniaks to withdraw from defensive positions south of Srebrenica town—the direction from which the Serbs were advancing. He did so because he believed that NATO aircraft would soon be launching widespread air strikes against the advancing Serbs."

"A third accusation levelled at the Bosniak defenders of Srebrenica is that they provoked the Serb offensive by attacking out of that safe area. Even though this accusation is often repeated by international sources, there is no credible evidence to support it. Dutchbat personnel on the ground at the time assessed that the few "raids" the Bosniaks mounted out of Srebrenica were of little or no military significance. These raids were often organized in order to gather food, as the Serbs had refused access for humanitarian convoys into the enclave. Even Serb sources approached in the context of this report acknowledged that the Bosniak forces in Srebrenica posed no significant military threat to them. The biggest attack the Bosniaks launched out of Srebrenica during the more than two years during which it was designated a safe area appears to have been the raid on the village of Višnjica, on 26 June 1995, in which several houses were burned, up to four Serbs were killed and approximately 100 sheep were stolen. In contrast, the Serbs overran the enclave two weeks later, driving tens of thousands from their homes, and summarily executing thousands of men and boys. The Serbs repeatedly exaggerated the extent of the raids out of Srebrenica as a pretext for the prosecution of a central war aim: to create a geographically contiguous and ethnically pure territory along the Drina, while freeing their troops to fight in other parts of the country. The extent to which this pretext was accepted at face value by international actors and observers reflected the prism of "moral equivalency" through which the conflict in Bosnia was viewed by too many for too long."

Controversy regarding number of Serb casualties

It is agreed by all sides that Serbs suffered a number of casualties during military forays led by Naser Orić. The controversy over the nature and number of the casualties came to a head in 2005, the 10th anniversary of the massacre. According to Human Rights Watch, the ultra-nationalist Serbian Radical Party "launched an aggressive campaign to prove that Muslims had committed crimes against thousands of Serbs in the area" which "was intended to diminish the significance of the July 1995 crime." A press briefing by the ICTY Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) dated 6 July 2005 noted that the number of Serb deaths in the region alleged by the Serbian authorities had increased from 1400 to 3500, a figure the OTP stated "[does] not reflect the reality." The briefing cited previous accounts:

• The Republika Srpska's Commission for War Crimes gave the number of Serb victims in the municipalities of Bratunac, Srebrenica and Skelani as 995; 520 in Bratunac and 475 in Srebrenica.
• The Chronicle of Our Graves by Milivoje Ivanisevic, president of the Belgrade Center for Investigating Crimes Committed against the Serbs, estimates the number of people killed at around 1200.
• For the Honorable Cross and Golden Freedom, a book published by the RS Ministry of Interior, referred to 641 Serb victims in the Bratunac-Srebrenica-Skelani region.

The accuracy of these numbers is challenged: the OTP noted that although Ivanisevic's book estimated that around 1200 Serbs were killed, personal details were only available for 624 victims. The validity of labeling some of the casualties as "victims" is also contested: studies have found a significant majority of military casualties compared to civilian casualties. This is in line with the nature of the conflict—Serb casualties died in raids by Bosniak forces on outlying villages used as military outposts for attacks on Srebrenica (many of which had been ethnically cleansed of their Bosniak majority population in 1992). For example the village of Kravica was attacked by Bosniak forces on Orthodox Christmas Day, 7 January 1993. Some Serb sources such as Ivanisevic allege that the village's 353 inhabitants were "virtually completely destroyed". In fact, the VRS' own internal records state that 46 Serbs died in the Kravica attack: 35 soldiers and 11 civilians. while the ICTY Prosecutor's Office's investigation of casualties on 7 and 8 January in Kravica and the surrounding villages found that 43 people were killed, of whom 13 were obviously civilians. Nevertheless the event continues to be cited by Serb sources as the key example of heinous crimes committed by Bosniak forces around Srebrenica. As for the destruction and casualties in the villages of Kravica, Siljkovići, Bjelovac, Fakovići and Sikirić, the judgment states that the prosecution failed to present convincing evidence that the Bosnian forces were responsible for them, because the Serb forces used artillery in the fighting in those villages. In the case of the village of Bjelovac, Serbs even used the warplanes.

The most up-to-date analysis of Serb casualties in the region comes from the Sarajevo-based Research and Documentation Center, a non-partisan institution with a multiethnic staff, whose data have been collected, processed, checked, compared and evaluated by international team of experts. The RDC's extensive review of casualty data found that Serb casualties in the Bratunac municipality amounted to 119 civilians and 424 soldiers.[69] It also established that although the 383 Serb victims buried in the Bratunac military cemetery are presented as casualties of ARBiH units from Srebrenica, 139 (more than one third of the total) had fought and died elsewhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Serb sources maintain that casualties and losses during the period prior to the creation of the safe area gave rise to Serb demands for revenge against the Bosniaks based in Srebrenica. The ARBiH raids are presented as a key motivating factor for the July 1995 genocide. This view is echoed by international sources including the 2002 report commissioned by the Dutch government on events leading to the fall of Srebrenica (the NIOD report). However these sources also cite misleading figures for the number of Serb casualties in the region. The NIOD report, for instance, repeats the erroneous claim that the raid on Kravica resulted in the total annihilation of its population. Many consider these efforts to explain the motivation behind the Srebrenica massacre are merely revisionist attempts to justify the genocide. To quote the report to the UN Secretary-General on the Fall of Srebrenica:

Even though this accusation is often repeated by international sources, there is no credible evidence to support it… The Serbs repeatedly exaggerated the extent of the raids out of Srebrenica as a pretext for the prosecution of a central war aim: to create a geographically contiguous and ethnically pure territory along the Drina, while freeing their troops to fight in other parts of the country. The extent to which this pretext was accepted at face value by international actors and observers reflected the prism of 'moral equivalency' through which the conflict in Bosnia was viewed by too many for too long.

UN Safe Area

On February 9, 1993 the Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladić launched a full-scale offensive against Srebrenica. [29] On April 17, 1993, Srebrenica was made a safe haven by the United Nations, while fighting between Serb forces and the forces of Orić in Srebrenica continued with the Serbs retaking much of the territory lost during 1992.

In the July 1995, the partially disarmed "UN safe area" was ultimately overrun by the Bosnian Serb Army, resulting in the Srebrenica Massacre. However, Orić, along with rest of the command staff of 8th OG, had been evacuated by helicopter in May 1995 two months prior to the fall of the enclave. Orić maintains that he was ordered to leave while the Bosnian government claims that he left on his own accord.

ICTY war crimes trial

After the Dayton Peace Accords, Orić opened a fitness club in Tuzla. In a post-war TV interview, he stated:

It's a fact that I was one of the main commanders in Srebrenica and, if I have to answer to someone, I'll answer; but I'd first have to bring up the time, space and situation in which we lived, as well as what the Serbs did to us compared to what we did to them. If Naser has to answer to someone, I'm right here and I'm not running away from responsibility, I'm not running away from the court, I'm not running away from the Hague or anyone. You just have to call on me and no problem.

An indictment at the ICTY against Orić was submitted on March 17, 2003 and confirmed on March 28. He was indicted on two counts of individual responsibility and four counts of command responsibility for violations of the laws or customs of war, and was arrested without further incident at his club by SFOR on April 10, 2003 and transferred to the Hague the next day.

Orić appeared before the court on April 15 and pleaded "not guilty" to all the counts of the indictment. He was denied a provisional release on July 25, 2003 and was held at the ICTY from April 11, 2003 until June 30, 2006.

The indictment

Orić was accused of failing to take necessary and reasonable measures to prevent the torture and cruel treatment of eleven and killing of seven Serb men being detained in the Srebrenica police station in 1992/1993, and to punish the perpetrators thereof.

He was also accused of having ordered (and led) numerous guerilla raids into as many as 50 Serb-populated villages in 1992-1993, particularly in the municipalities of Bratunac and Srebrenica. According to the prosecution, in the course of such combat activities, buildings, dwellings, and other property in predominantly Serb villages, were burnt and destroyed; as a result, thousands of Serb individuals fled the area.

The trial

The trial began on October 6, 2004 and the prosecution completed its case on June 1, 2005. A week later the tribunal dropped two of the counts against him, withdrew all allegation of plundering public and private property; the Tribunal also dropped two villages from the list of alleged raids. The defense case commenced on July 4, 2005 and ended on April 10, 2006. The prosecution asked for an 18 year prison term, while the defense asked for an acquittal. In all there were 182 trial days, 82 witnesses testifying (52 prosecution and 20 defense) and 1,649 exhibits presented as evidence. The decision in the case was delivered on June 30, 2006.

The verdict

The ICTY convicted Orić on only a few of the charges in the indictment and sentenced him to imprisonment for 2 years. The judges noted that militarily superior Serb forces encircled the town and that there was an unmanageable influx of refugees there, as well as a critical shortage of food and the breakdown of law and order. The judges also noted that it was in these circumstances that Orić, then aged 25, was elected commander of a poorly trained volunteer force that lacked effective links with government forces in Sarajevo. His authority was scorned by some other Bosnian leaders and his situation became worse as the Serb forces increased the momentum of their siege.

The judges stated in the verdict that Orić had reason to know about murder and cruel treatment of Serbs on two specific occasions in the Police station, but acquitted him of all other crimes. Orić was acquitted of direct involvement in the murder of prisoners in the early years of the 1992-95 Bosnia war. But the court found he had closed his eyes to their mistreatment and failed to punish their killers. The three judges acquitted him of all charges related to the wanton destruction of Serb villages. The judges also took into account the lack of food and supplies and resulting lack of order and law during the Serbian siege on Srebrenica.

As for the destruction in the villages of Kravica, Siljkovići, Bjelovac, Fakovići and Sikiric, the judgment states that the prosecution failed to present convincing evidence that the Bosnian forces were responsible for them, because the Serb forces used artillery in the fighting in those villages. In the case of the village of Bjelovac, Serbs even used the warplanes.

Since Orić had been in the ICTY detention unit for 3 years, three months and 21 days, the court ordered that he be released as soon as possible.

The appeal

On 31 July 2006 UN chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte announced that she would appeal against the two-year sentence, saying it was too short. Oric's lawyer said she would also launch an appeal, saying her client did not commit any crime and should be acquitted.

Post-trial developments

Orić arrived at Sarajevo International Airport on July 1, 2006 and was welcomed by a crowd of thousands of well wishers as well as family and friends. A limousine was commissioned to take him to his home in Tuzla.

On July 4, he gave an interview to the Sarajevo daily Dnevni Avaz in which he stated among other things that the atmosphere in the ICTY detention unit was jovial and that there was no hostility between the inmates who were former war time adversaries. Orić said that he was most friendly with Gen. Enver Hadžihasanović, Lahi Brahimaj and Isak Musliu and he also reported having a friendly relationship with Ante Gotovina. Orić said that he passed the time by working out and learning the English language. He also stated that he believed that the behavior of an indictee in the detention unit and in the courtroom would reflect the severity of the prison term one would receive.

Orić also stated that he had many encounters with Serbs who were involved in the siege and massacre in Srebrenica. According to Orić, Miroslav Deronjić frankly discussed how Radovan Karadžić and others planned and carried out military activity and atrocities in Srebrenica. Orić also had encounters with Slobodan Milošević who once jokingly told Orić that he would be grateful if Orić would write him a report about the war time situation in Srebrenica to which Orić responded by saying that he believed that Milošević already had all that information, prompting Milošević to say, "Yes but I would like to get your perspective on it." Orić did not sign the book of condolence after Milošević died. According to Orić Vojislav Šešelj and Mladen Naletilić were the biggest jokers and Jadranko Prlić would refer to him as hero.[30]

As of 2007, Naser Oric is on the Black List of the United States of America, whose entrance and property to the US is banned.

See also

• Srebrenica massacre
• Serb propaganda
• Bosnian War

External links

• ICTY Case Information Sheet on Naser Oric
• ICTY latest Indictment: Third Amended Indictment, 30 June 2005
• Facts about alleged Serb casualties around Srebrenica
• ICTY Indictment against Naser Orić
• Srebrenica - a 'safe' area by the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation, 2002
• UN 1998 'Srebrenica Report'
• Orić Trial Drama
• Inconsistencies Mar Orić Trial
• Doubts Cast on Orić Evidence
• Orić praised by prosecution witnesses
• Thousands Welcome Srebrenica Commander
• Suspects who went to war over diversity pass jail days in harmony