An OTP investigator had lunch with Vinko Pandurevic in October 2001. She wanted to know about the crimes against Serbs in 1992 and 1993 in the Srebrenica area. The lunch took eight hours. Pandurevic, who was at that time already indicted, but whose indictment was under seal, spent two hours denying his responsibility for Srebrenica crimes


In 1999, Eileen Gilleece took leave of absence from the US police force to be able to join the OTP investigation of crimes against Serbs in the Srebrenica area in 1992 and 1993.

In the course of this investigation, the investigator met Vinko Pandurevic, former VRS Zvornik Brigade commander. This was in October 2001. By that time, he was already indicted for the crimes in Srebrenica in 1995, in the same indictment as Radislav Krstic, who was at that time on trial in The Hague. The fact that Pandurevic was indicted was kept under seal until December 2001.

Pandurevic gave Eileen Gilleece names of several persons she could talk to about the crimes against Serbs and told her about the exhumations in Kamenica. Although she was interested in crimes against Serbs – and Naser Oric was later charged with them - she got the impression that Pandurevic was much more "concerned" about Richard Butler's conclusions. Butler, prosecution’s military expert made a report that was presented at that time at General Krstic's trial.

In the course of the eight-hour lunch with the investigator, Pandurevic used the definitions from the military lexicon and encyclopedia he had brought with him to contest some of Butler's conclusions that the schools and other buildings in which the captured Muslims had been held were in Pandurevic's area of responsibility. Pandurevic confirmed that "3,500 packages" mentioned by General Krstic and Colonel Beara in a conversation intercepted on 15 July 1995 in fact were a reference to Muslim prisoners that were to be "taken care of". Still he said he had "no official information about them".

In the cross-examination, Vinko Pandurevic’s defense counsel challenged the witness's credibility and the reliability of her evidence pointing to the many errors in the notes she wrote after their conversation.

[IMAGE]2445[/IMAGE]The trial of the seven former Bosnian Serb military and police officers continued with the testimony of Helga Burnborg, a demographer from Norway. He compiled six reports on the number of missing persons in Srebrenica in the period from General Krstic's trial in 2000 to the present. According to the last report, 7,661 persons went missing in July 1995 in Srebrenica. In relation to the data from 1991 census, the number of Muslim men in that area has dropped by a third. The number of middle aged Muslim men has decreased by one half. The data about the missing persons were collected from the composite missing persons list made by Red Cross and Physicians for Human Rights.

The trial for the Srebrenica and Zepa crimes continues on Monday.

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