Five Serbs alleged to have killed six Bosnian Muslims while a comrade shot a home video were arraigned on murder charges today, in the first trial in Serbia concerning the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.
The five were arrested after shock images of the killing of the bound and terrified captives were broadcast on Serbian television in June, exploding a culture of denial that had persisted since the end of the 1992-95 Bosnia war.
The video showed camouflaged, armed members of the Scorpions paramilitary group, joking, smoking, torturing then shooting the unarmed young men in a clearing in the woods, their wrists tied behind their backs with wire.
At the time, Belgrade denied it was helping ethnic Serbs fighting in Bosnia. The video showed Serbs their government and forces were deeply engaged.
"The war crimes prosecutors' office has a lot of evidence which will be used to try to convince the court that a really terrible crime happened there," said spokesman Bruno Vekaric.
"We will call a dozen witnesses, and use other means in accordance with the law which will make the indictment completely irrefutable," he told reporters, indicating that the video would play a key role in the case.
A sixth Scorpion identified in the video is already on trial in Croatia, in a test of whether courts in the ex-Yugoslav states can handle such sensitive cases fairly. Bosnia has charged 11 with the murders of more than 1,000 Bosnian Muslim men, in a warehouse near Srebrenica.