Local Serb Leader ‘Wanted to Divide Vogosca’

Prosecution witness Besim Krupalija, the former deputy president of the executive board of the Vogosca municipal assembly, told the state court on Monday that defendant Jovan Tintor said at a meeting at the beginning of May 1992 that he wanted the municipality to be divided.

Krupalija said he was prohibited from entering the municipality building in late April 1992 after a yellow VW Golf driven by a man with a stocking over his face followed him to work that day.

“When I arrived at the entrance, another person was there and told me I could no longer work there, adding it was a Serb municipality and we were not welcome anymore. He said he was ordered to be kind to us, but he could also open fire and arrest people,” Krupalija said.

He said that on May 2, 1992, he received an invitation to go to negotiations with the Serb Democratic Party in order to get the municipality functioning again.

At the meeting, Tintor demanded that Serbs and Bosniaks in Vogosca be separated, Krupalija recalled.

“Tintor said: ‘You should know that I shall never live in a sovereign country of Bosnian and Herzegovina. You, Muslims, did not want to live in Yugoslavia. We never want to live with you again. We want to divide the municipality. We shall leave the parts inhabited by Muslims to Muslims, while the areas inhabited by Serbs will belong to Serbs,” he said.

According to the witness’s testimony, a few hours later, shooting began.

The local population in the Menjak neighbourhood, where he lived, sought shelter in basements. The shooting lasted until the evening and all the houses in the neighbourhood were hi, he saidt.

“When we went out, we saw total chaos. We heard that ‘[Serbian Radical Party leader Vojislav] Seselj’s men’ had arrived, so people began fleeing. I left for Sarajevo the following day,” Krupalija said.

The indictment charges Tintor with participating in a widespread and systematic attack against the non-Serb population in the Vogosca municipality from April 1992 to the end of July.

He is charged with unlawful detention, torture, beating, forcing people to do hard labour and the murder of Bosniaks and Croats at several locations, including detention camps.

At another trial at the state court on Monday, a court medical expert testified that a detainee who was released from the Crna Kuca detention centre in Kruscica in the Vitez municipality had severe bodily injuries.

“On the basis of the available documentation I can say that, during his medical examination, [detainee Goran] Strukar had contusions around his eye, a fracture of the nose bone, two broken teeth, an injured lip, a suspicious fracture of the cheek bone, as well as contusions on his upper arm, lower arm, back and chest,” said expert Branimir Markunovic.

“Individually, each of those injuries can be considered a light bodily injury, but when cumulative, like in his case, they are considered to be severe bodily injuries,” Markunovic added.

He pointed out that all the injuries were caused by blows from blunt and hard objects.
Minet Akeljic, Saban Haskic, Senad Bilal, Hazim Patkovic and Semsudin Djelilovic are on trial for the mental and physical abuse of detainees in the Crna Kuca detention centre.

According to the charges, they were all members of the Bosnian Army’s military police force.