Bosniak Witnesses Describe Detention and Abuse
Protected witnesses tell court of beatings and rapes administered by Bosnian Serb forces in makeshift prisons.
Bosniak Witnesses Describe Detention and Abuse
Protected witnesses tell court of beatings and rapes administered by Bosnian Serb forces in makeshift prisons.
Witnesses testified this week in the trial of two former Bosnian Serb police commanders about the abuse they suffered at the hands of the Bosnian Serb forces who they say detained them in Kotor Varos municipality.
First to testify was Witness ST-19, a former member of the Bosniak Party of Democratic Action, SDA, who gave evidence in the Hague tribunal trial of Mico Stanisic and Stojan Zupljanin under a pseudonym, with measures used to distort his face and voice.
He told judges that on June 11, 1992, he was arrested on the bridge of the river Bosanka as he and two colleagues went to meet former Bosnian Serb police chief Slobodan Zupljanin in the town of Kotor Varos, in order to negotiate a possible solution for the conflict.
He said some of the men who arrested him were wearing ex-Yugoslav military police uniforms, but he knew them to be Bosnian Serb military police because they lived in the same town.
"We were intercepted by armed people in blue and coloured uniforms. Alongside a few other Muslims that were imprisoned, I was taken to the primary school in [the nearby village of] Maslovare. We were accompanied by soldiers in camouflage, some of them with white military belts, which I believed were the uniforms of the ex-Yugoslav military police," the witness said.
"Muslims and Croats were imprisoned in a room in the elementary school there."
He said at the school, he was beaten by Bosnian Serb military police, but did not elaborate on this.
Stojan Zupljanin, the former head of the Regional Security Services Centre in Banja Luka and adviser to the Bosnian Serb political leader Radovan Karadzic, who is awaiting trial for genocide, is accused of the extermination, murder, persecution, and deportation of non-Serbs in northwestern Bosnia between April and December, 1992.
His co-accused Mico Stanisic is charged with murder, torture and cruel treatment of non-Serb civilians, as well as for his failure to prevent or punish crimes committed by his subordinates.
The indictment against Stanisic states that he was appointed the minister in charge of the newly founded Bosnian Serb ministry of internal affairs in April 1992. From that time, he was the most senior ministry official, and was also a member of the Bosnian Serb government of Republika Srpska, RS, it says.
The accused, whose indictments were joined together in September 2008, have both pleaded not guilty to all counts.
Stanisic and Zupljanin are also alleged to have participated in a joint criminal enterprise in 1992, which was aimed at the permanent removal of other non-Serbs from the territory of an intended Serb state.
They are accused of crimes commited between April 1 and December 31, 1992, in municipalities throughout Bosnia and Hercegovina, including Kotor Varos municipality.
Witness ST-19 said that from the school in Maslovare, he was taken to the police station in Kotor Varos by Bosnian Serb police.
"Me, and a Croat youth named Marjan Miskic, were taken out of the school building wearing handcuffs, and transferred to the police station in Kotor Varos," he said.
"On our way there, we were accompanied by young men I knew from seeing around. One individual I knew personally was Nebojsa Sepic, who was wearing a camouflage uniform and probably was a senior member of a police formation of some kind at the school in Maslovare."
Prosecutor Thomas Hannis asked what condition the witness and his Croat colleague were in at that time.
"I was in poor shape, handcuffed, terrified, beaten... A horrible picture," he said.
"I can freely say that Marjan Miskic was in much worse shape. I think that he had been continuously beaten during detention and looked much worse than me. Our clothes were wet, as it had rained continuously during these days. Our clothes were bloody and our appearance was miserable and disorderly."
Following that, the witness said that he was transferred to the Banja Luka security services centre – the name of the police headquarters – for questioning.
"From Kotor Varos, I was driven in a civilian VW Golf car to Banja Luka by a man I knew slightly, whose name was Zdravko Samardzija. He wore a camouflage uniform with a camouflage-coloured cowboy hat. We were accompanied by Vlado Novakovic, a young man I knew well from earlier times, who was wearing the uniform of the reserve police forces [of the former Yugoslavia], which was blue," he said.
The witness said that at the main police station in Banja Luka, he and Miskic were put in two separate, neighbouring rooms. He told judges that from his room, he could hear Miskic being beaten.
"There was perpetual noise, shouting and screaming coming out of the room. Miskic was often taken to the toilet, and when we met again, he couldn't walk normally. He complained of sharp pain in his ribs. He felt the consequences of that beating for a long time after we came to the Kotor Varos prison, where he lay immovable on the concrete," he said.
From Banja Luka, the witness was transferred to an improvised prison at a warehouse in Kotor Varos, which he said held Muslim and Croat prisoners, and which he said he didn't leave until July 1993.
During his entire stay, the witness said, the prison was guarded by members of the Bosnian Serb police.
The trial continued with the testimony of another protected witness, referred to by the pseudonym ST-56.
The Bosniak woman told the court that in 1992, she was raped when she was in the advanced stages of pregnancy by two Bosnian Serb guards, who she said held her captive at a sawmill in Kotor Varos. She gave birth to her third child a month after the rape, she said.
According to indicment against Stanisic and Zupljanjin, a sawmill at Kotor Varos was used as prison for women, children, and non-able bodied men. The indictment states that women in the sawmill were "systematically raped".
The witness said that in the first half of 1992, she and around 30 to 40 inhabitants of her village – which was not named – hid in the surrounding woods for two and a half months because they felt insecure, as a result of the presence of Bosnian Serb troops in the area.
They were then caught by Bosnian Serb forces, who ordered them to board trucks, she said.
"They ordered us to board the trucks, swearing and saying: 'This is our land, Serb land! You Muslims have no place in here!" she said.
"They took us to the sawmill, which was horrible as we found human excrement there. Having seen that, we concluded that someone had been there before us," the witness said, adding that when she was there, there were some 400-500 people, mostly women, children and old men, at the mill.
The witness said that on the journey to the mill, they were followed by Serb guards who stayed with them there.
During the first night at the sawmill, she said that she was approached by one of the guards, who started insulting her, before taking her to a dark room.
"He ordered me to take my clothes off. I said no, but he said he would shoot," the witness said.
"I couldn't even imagine that he would rape me; I was just afraid that he would try take my child out. That's what I thought he would do, take my child out of my stomach. He started telling me again to take my clothes off, I told him I would pay him. I had some money in my bra, and I begged him not to touch me. He took the money and yet ordered me again to take my clothes off," said the witness, visibly shaken and crying, prompting Judge Frederik Harhoff to interrupt the statement and ask for a break.
When the testimony continued, the witness said the Serb guard had taken her clothes off and raped her for some 15 minutes.
During the rape, the witness said that the guard bit her body, "and when he left, another guard came in and told me not to get dressed, before he raped me too. A third soldier came in and ordered me to get dressed and go where I had been before, but not to tell anyone a single word".
The prosecutor asked the witness if she knew of the guards having taken any other women or girls out.
"Yes, some 20 women and girls were taken that night," she said, adding that she knew the women who were selected.
The trial continues next week.
Velma Saric is an IWPR-trained reporter in Sarajevo.
