# Dražen Erdemović

Dražen Erdemović (born 25 November 1971) was a soldier who fought during the Bosnian War for the Army of Republika Srpska (VRS) and was later sentenced for his participation in the 1995 Srebrenica massacre.

## Background

Erdemović was born in Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Yugoslavia to a Croat mother and a Serb father. During the Bosnian War, he was mobilized into the VRS 10th Sabotage Detachment, a part of the Army of Republika Srpska.

## Srebrenica

In July 1995, Erdemović and his unit were sent to Branjevo military farm in the village of Pilica, north of Zvornik. After the VRS forces took over Srebrenica on 11 July, the Serbs began to send male Bosniaks to various locations for execution. One of those places was the farm in Pilica, 15 kilometers from the border with Serbia, where Erdemović and the 10th Sabotage Detachment were tasked with executing about 1,200 Bosniak men and boys between the ages of approximately 17 and 60 years, who had surrendered to the members of the Bosnian Serb police or army near Srebrenica.
On 16 July, the prisoners were bused to the farm and gunned down in groups of ten. Erdemović allegedly resisted the order, but was then told that he either shot them, or hand his gun to another, and join those to be killed. After the murders were over the victims were buried in mass graves. While it is unknown exactly how many people were personally killed by Erdemović, he estimated it was around 70 men and boys.
After the massacre, Erdemović returned home, but reportedly felt guilt-ridden over the crimes he had committed. Fellow soldiers of the 10th Sabotage put pressure on him not to say anything, including a Serbian soldier, Stanko Savanović. One evening, while meeting in an undisclosed bar, Savanović shot Erdemović, wounding him badly in the torso. In early 1996, Erdemović sought out an ABC field reporter and testified on camera about what happened at Srebrenica. Several days later, he was arrested and charged with war crimes in the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

## Trial

The Erdemović case was significant in the Tribunal being it was the first application of the defence of duress, claiming that his life had been threatened and that he had no choice. It was found that it did not absolve him of guilt, but could be a mitigating factor in his sentencing. On 29 November 1996, Erdemović was sentenced to ten years in prison, convicted of murder as a crime against humanity. He was the first person to enter a guilty plea at the Tribunal, and was the only member of the 10th Sabotage Detachment to actually be tried for the war crimes, while the rest remained on the Tribunal's most wanted list.
Erdemović appealed and his sentence was later reduced by ICTY to five years in 1998, accepting that he committed the offences under threat of death had he disobeyed the order. Credit was given for time served since 28 March 1996. On 13 August 1999, he was granted early release. Upon serving his sentence in a Norwegian prison, Erdemović entered the Tribunal Court's witness protection program and testified at the trial of Slobodan Milošević:

## In the media

The story of Erdemovic's trial in the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia forms the basis of the 2005 play A Patch of Earth, written by Kitty Felde and collected in the anthology The Theatre of Genocide: Four Plays about Mass Murder in Rwanda, Bosnia, Cambodia, and Armenia (University of Wisconsin Press, 2008).