Witness faints in court

Suada Jasarevic, who was due to testify in the case of Marko Samardzija, fainted in the courtroom on Friday. The prosecution later released her from the witness stand.

Jasarevic had arrived from Biljane, a village near the northwestern town of Kljuc, the previous evening. According to prosecutor Vesna Ilic, she was in good health when she arrived.

“I give up on today’s hearing of this witness, but if it becomes necessary and if the witness is in better health, we shall question her at the end of the trial,” Ilic said.

The indictment charges Samardzija, a former commander of the local battalion of the Republika Srpska Army, with ordering an attack on the village of Biljane. Men from the ages of 18 to 60 were separated from the women, taken away and killed.

The second witness to appear on Friday, Asif Medic, 77, is a former neighbour of Samardzija who lives in the village of Sanica.

He told the trial chamber that the accused came to his house after the men were executed near the primary school in Biljane. At the time Samardzija told him that his task was only to “pick up” the men from the nearby village of Brkici and bring them to the school – claiming he did not know what would happen to them, Medic said.

“Marko … also told me that he would have taken the civilians to his house if he knew they would be shot,” Medic told the court.

The witness also testified that he saw the accused before the executions took place.

“I saw Marko at the end of May of the same year, when the armored personnel carriers entered the village of Sanica with armed soldiers,” Medic said.

“I was hiding with my son and son-in-law in the forest not far from that place and I saw Marko standing a little farther from the group of soldiers who were taking out the men from a house,” he testified.

At the end of today’s hearing, Samardzija addressed the trial chamber himself. He asked the judges why he was being processed under the 2003 criminal code and not by the code of the former Yugoslavia, which was in force at the time the alleged offences had been committed.

Presiding judge Zorica Gogala said that the trial chamber would justify its standpoint on the law in this matter when pronouncing the verdict.

The trial is set to continue on May 15.