Kos on the execution of Srebrenica residents: We were tired, and the bosses demanded we kill faster!

Who, 19 years ago, killed at least 8,372 Srebrenica residents in just a few days? According to one of the most important verdicts of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina from 2012 in the case against Franc Kos and others, a large part of that bloody work was carried out by the infamous 10th Sabotage Detachment of the Main Staff of the Army of Republika Srpska, reports the BiH news agency Patria (NAP).

In that case, the Court of BiH sentenced four members of the bloody detachment, Franc Kos, Stanko Kojić, Vlastimir Golijan, and Zoran Goronja, to long-term imprisonment for crimes against humanity.

They were convicted for participating in the attack on Srebrenica, but their main task was the execution and extermination of captured Bosniaks from Srebrenica after its fall.

After the capture of Srebrenica by Bosnian Serb forces, the entire Bosniak population was expelled from the protected zone. As stated in the verdict, "on July 16, 1995, between 10:00 AM and 3:00 PM, about 800 Bosniak men were brought from the school in the village of Gornja Pilica, Zvornik municipality, to the farm Branjevo, near the village of Pilica, as the execution site.".

- Franc Kos, Stanko Kojić, Zoran Goronja, and Vlastimir Golijan, at that location, together with a few other members of the 10th Sabotage Detachment, shooting from automatic rifles, and Stanko Kojić also from a pistol, and Zoran Goronja from an M-84 machine gun, with the intent to take lives, summarily executed about 800 captured Bosniak men from the Srebrenica enclave, aged 18 to 60, some of whom had blindfolds and bound hands, after which Franc Kos and Stanko Kojić, together with another member of the 10th Sabotage Detachment, finished off the executed by shooting them in the head to ensure no one survived. Despite this, two men survived the execution - the verdict stated.

Criminal Kos, a Slovenian national who was arrested in Croatia where he was hiding, showed no remorse for the murder of hundreds of people during the trial. He coldly described the liquidations during his testimony to his boss Radovan Karadžić.

- The insides of three or four were protruding... They were moaning, begging... I shot them in the head to end their suffering... I said: 'People, this can't go on like this anymore...' Then we took out ten prisoners at a time" - Kos said in the Hague courtroom, adding that the execution continued with automatic rifles.

He added that after the fifth or sixth bus, someone said they had to execute faster.

- They didn't like that we were shooting slowly, with two or three bullets in the back of the head - Kos said. The witness stated that he and other members of the Detachment said they couldn't go faster because they were hungry and thirsty. The executions, according to Kos's testimony, were continued by VRS soldiers from Bratunac, who knew the prisoners and harassed them.

The four criminals were finally sentenced to a total of 112 years in prison, reports NAP.