Srebrenica: Why Did Two Countries Indict the Same Bosnian Serb General?

"The aforementioned buses must head towards the sports stadium in Bratunac on July 12, 1995, by 4.30 pm at the latest," it added.

The order was signed by Milenko Zivanovic, a general who at the time was the commander of the Bosnian Serb Army's Drina Corps.

In another order, Zivanovic told the Bosnian Serb Army's Zvornik Infantry Brigade and Bratunac Light Infantry Brigade that "in keeping with the existing order to provide vehicles for evacuation from the Srebrenica enclave, see that the traffic is regulated as follows", listing the roads that should be controlled.

Then at around 10am, the Bosnian Serb Army's Main Staff received a note in which Zivanovic, "pursuant to the Bosnian Serb Army Main Staff commander's order to provide 50 buses for evacuation from the Srebrenica enclave", asked for additional approval for diesel and petrol.

These orders were given by Zivanovic the morning after Srebrenica, a Bosniak-populated, UN-protected enclave in eastern Bosnia, fell to Bosnian Serb forces.

Some 40,000 people sought refuge at a nearby UN base but the Bosnian Serb Army took them away, using vehicles that were requisitioned in the order signed by Zivanovic.

Women, children and elderly people were mostly forcibly sent to territories under Bosnian Army control, while some 8,000 man were executed in series of mass killings which were later classified as genocide by international courts.

Over 26 years later, in December 2021, the Serbian War Crimes Prosecutor's Office indicted Zivanovic for war crimes against civilians.

The Serbian prosecutor claimed that he "ordered the forced relocation of the Muslim-Bosniak civilian population from certain areas belonging to the [Bosnian Serb Army] Drina Corps' area of...