Victim Numbers in Lukic Trial Questioned Again
Witness said that eight names should not be on list of those who died in Visegrad house fire.
Thursday, 9 April, 2009
Victim Numbers in Lukic Trial Questioned Again
Witness said that eight names should not be on list of those who died in Visegrad house fire.
Thursday, 9 April, 2009
The prosecution has already requested that the names of three of those people be removed from the indictment, after the defence presented evidence in March that two were still alive and a third died well after the fire.
The witness this week, Huso Kurspahic, originally testified for the prosecution on September 1 last year. His mother, two sisters and other family members were among those who were burned alive in the Pionirska street house fire on June 14, 1992, in the eastern Bosnian town of Visegrad.
According to the indictment, a total of 70 Bosniaks died that night after the Lukic cousins allegedly barricaded the group into the house and set it alight. Only seven people escaped the fire, says the prosecution’s pre-trial brief.
Kurspahic said he escaped Visegrad in April 1992 and was working as a police officer in the nearby Bosniak-held village of Medjedja at the time of the fire.
He testified last September that he had first heard about the fire from one of the survivors, seven or eight days after it occurred.
This week, Kurspahic arrived in court with his own list of deceased victims – compiled recently, he said, with the help of family members.
The fact that his list of victims contained only 53 names – as opposed to the 70 names in the indictment – prompted a flurry of questions from both the prosecution and defence.
“Do you believe [your list] to be correct and authentic?” asked prosecutor Stevan Cole.
“Ninety-nine per cent,” responded Kurspahic.
When Cole asked him to elaborate on any details in the list that might not be correct, the witness became exasperated.
“I can tell you that it’s 2,000 per cent accurate,” he said.
The witness’s list was then entered into evidence.
When Cole began to compare Kurspahic’s list with that in the indictment, presiding judge Patrick Robinson deemed this process “confusing”.
He suggested that the prosecution question the witness about every name listed in the indictment, in order.
Cole agreed, and began reading each of the 70 names out loud, one by one.
“Number 21 is a two-day-old baby – did it have a name?” asked the prosecutor.
“No,” responded Kurspahic. “It’s an infant who hadn’t even got a name. A woman gave birth to a baby two days before [while hiding] in the woods.”
He confirmed that both the baby and mother perished in the fire.
“What about number 25, Hana Kurspahic?” asked the prosecutor.
“Yes, that’s my sister,” said the witness. “But there are two names – she also comes under 27 – so you should delete the other number.”
His sister, he said, had been included on the prosecution’s list under her nickname, Hana, and also under her given name, Hasiba.
“I’m going to suggest that they are two separate people,” said Cole. “One person is your sister, and one person is another woman.”
“No, no,” responded Kurspahic. “The truth is they are one and the same person.”
The witness confirmed during questioning that another person had been listed twice in the indictment.
“What about number 64, Enver Sehic, approximately 13 years old?”
“No, Lukic took him and his father out of the house before the fire,” said the witness. “They disappeared.”
In total, Kurspahic said that eight people on the prosecution’s list did not die in the fire.
Milan Lukic’s defence team wanted to know why the witness didn’t disclose this information when he previously testified.
“Did you know about this error prior to your testimony last time?” asked Dragan Ivetic, one of Lukic’s lawyers.
“I didn’t know,” responded the witness. “If I’d known, I’d have put it right. I’m here to clear things up, to establish the truth, the real truth.”
What the witness knew – and when he knew it – was a point of confusion throughout his testimony.
While Kurspahic claimed this week that the number of victims on his new list was the “only correct number”, when he testified in September, he told prosecutors that “there is no accurate number [of victims], but there would be about 70 people who perished there”.
He also testified this week that he attended the funeral of one person on the list a few years ago in Sarajevo – something he omitted to mention when he previously appeared in court
When Ivetic questioned him about these apparent discrepancies in his testimony, he responded, “I stand by everything I said and I have no reason to [falsely] add or subtract a name.”
Closing arguments in the trial are currently scheduled for April 21.
Rachel Irwin is an IWPR reporter in The Hague.
