On a cold and snowy night, I sat in his living room watching a shocking video version of what might have been called Nasir Oric’s Greatest Hits. There were burning houses, dead bodies, severed heads, and people fleeing.

Oric grinned throughout, admiring his handiwork.“We ambushed them,” he said when a number of dead Serbs appeared on the screen. The next sequence of dead bodies had been done in by explosives: “We launched those guys to the moon,” he boasted.

When footage of a bullet-marked ghost town appeared without any visible bodies, Oric hastened to announce: “We killed 114 Serbs there.”

Later there were celebrations, with singers with wobbly voices chanting his praises.

Excerpt from the Canadian Toronto Star newspaper article: “A Reporter’s Account of an Evening Spent with Nasir Oric, the Muslim Commander in Srebrenica”

Original title: “Fearsome Muslim warlord eludes Bosnian Serb forces”
Toronto Star, July 16, 1995 By Bill Schiller Continue reading →