“I do have difficulties remembering things,” said Mirsad Kuralic who has suffered severe psychological problems since his ordeal in 1992. “But as far as the events in these camps are concerned, they cannot be erased from my memory.”
Kuralic had been called to testify in the trial of former Bosnian Serb parliamentary speaker Krajisnik, who is charged with eight counts of war crimes, including genocide, for his alleged role in a plan to drive the Muslim and Croat population from Serb-held territories during the Bosnian war.
Prosecutors say the strategy included the imprisonment and abuse of thousands of civilians in dozens of prison camps.
Presiding Judge Alphons Orie this week ordered prosecutors to wrap up their case by July 22 so the defence can begin calling witnesses. Orie said that Krajisnik, whose trial began last February, is on track to be sentenced in April 2006.
Kuralic, a metal worker from the small town of Kalesija, near Zvornik, has been so traumatised by the events he witnessed and personally experienced that prosecutors asked him only a limited number of questions to spare him further distress.
They first read a summary of the statement he gave to tribunal investigators in June 1996, which said he was captured by Serb forces while on an armed reconnaissance mission in May 1992, just a month after he was drafted into the Bosnian army.
He was taken to a command post in Memici, where he was “beaten, stabbed, cut on his face and leg and burned with cigarettes”.
He was then locked up for two months in a prison camp in Vlasenica and “severely abused and beaten daily” before being transferred to the Batkovic camp in the Bijeljina municipality where he was placed in a warehouse with about 1,800 Muslim and Croat prisoners.
In his statement, Kuralic said he and nine other Muslims were selected “for a particularly cruel treatment”, being “beaten at least three times a day” and sometimes “forced to beat one another or engage in sexual intercourse”. This usually took place in front of all the other prisoners, he said.
Kuralic speculated the group was selected for particularly harsh treatment, because most were Muslim soldiers, “They called us Alija’s fighters, soldiers who were fighting against Republika Srpska.”
According to Kuralic’s statement, when the Red Cross came to the Batkovic camp that August to register prisoners, his “special group of ten and some of the very youngest and very oldest prisoners were taken out of the camp and hidden in the forest or nearby sheds”.
“Obviously, they had to hide us from the public, because they could not show…the state we were in,” Kuralic explained in court.
He added that “this happened five or six times” over the month he spent in Batkovic, “whenever the Red Cross or journalists came along”.
Kuralic was then taken to a hangar in Doboj in September, where he and other non-Serb prisoners were regularly beaten and forced to do manual labour. On one occasion in January 1993, while digging trenches under fire on the front line, he was shot and hospitalised.
He was eventually released as part of a prisoner exchange on April 21, 1993.
Kuralic told the judges that he continues to receive treatment for the physical and psychological damage he suffered as a result of his detention, including a post-traumatic stress disorder.
Later in the week, prominent Bosnian Muslim businessman, Izet Mehinagic, gave evidence supporting the prosecution’s depiction of how Serb forces gained military control of towns across the region.
Mehinagic, the manager of a large construction company in Zvornik just before the war, was present in the eastern Bosnian town in April 1992 when Serb forces demanded the Muslim population give up their weapons. They attacked with support from the Yugoslav People’s Army, JNA, when that order was rejected.
Prosecutors say it was standard practice across Serb-dominated parts of Bosnia for Serb forces to make this demand before over-running any given town.
Mehinagic said the assault on Zvornik was led by forces under the control of the notorious Serbian paramilitary Zeljko Raznatovic, also known as Arkan.
Two weeks ago, journalist Sead Omeragic told judges that just a few days before the Zvornik attack, Arkan’s troops overran the northeastern Bosnian town of Bijeljina and killed and expelled its Muslim and Croat citizens.
Mehinagic also confirmed that the JNA played a role in the assault on Zvornik, something he said had shocked him at the time.
According to the indictment against Krajisnik, a month after the Zvornik attack, JNA units that remained in Bosnia were effectively brought under the command of the newly created Army of Republika Srpska.
The trial is due to resume on May 9.
Merdijana Sadovic is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
