YUGOSLAV ARMY PARTICIPATED IN THE SIEGE OF THE BOSNIAN CAPITAL SARAJEVO

THE HAGUE, The Netherlands (November 25,2008) - Elite Yugoslav Army units participated in the siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo in 1993,former high-ranking VJ officer Borivoje Tešić told the trial of former Chief of General Staff of the Yugoslav Army (Vojska Jugoslavije "VJ") Serbian war criminal Momčilo Perišić before the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in The Hague, The Netherlands.

Tešić confirmed yesterday that he had led a special VJ unit, some 100 strong, in the region around the Sarajevo suburb of Vogošća in late December 1993.

At the time, Tešić was an operative officer in the VJ’s Guards Brigade.

He also confirmed that the VJ’s 72nd Special Brigade had also been active in Vogošća, adding that he had received orders from then Special Corps Chief-of-Staff Ljubiša Stanimirović to assist in the evacuation of the brigade’s members and the recovery of the corpses of eight special unit members.

Tešić said that as commander of the Special Corps, Miodrag Panić had not had the authority to order such a maneuver, which was why he had presumed that the orders had come from VJ HQ in Belgrade,Serbia.

Serbian war criminal Momčilo Perišić was VJ commander-in-chief at the time. Tešić also told the court that VJ officers had sent reports on a daily basis to the VJ’s Special Corps Operations Center.

Most of the witness’s testimony has been closed to the public, because of the confidentiality of the documents in question.

Serbian war criminal Momčilo Perišić is accused of providing logistical and financial support to supporting the genocidal paramilitary fascist forces of the Serbians living in Bosnia and Croatia, as well as of playing a major role in a four-year siege of the Bosnian capital Sarajevo that left about 12,000 Bosnian civilians dead, the bombing of the Croatian capital Zagreb that killed seven Croatian civilians and injured 194 and participation in the Srebrenica genocide, where over 10,000 Bosnian civilians were mass murdered by the genocidal Serbian fascist aggressor in July 1995.
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