Savic and Mucibabic: Vicious beating up
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Mirsad Bajrovic, who testified as a Prosecution witness at the trial of Krsto Savic and Milko Mucibabic, spoke about the capture and torture he survived while he was held in the police station in Nevesinje and a detention camp in Bileca in 1992.
“On June 16, 1992 I was captured by three armed soldiers in Nevesinje,where I lived at the time. They took me to the police station. There were many reserve police members in there. They started beating me with various objects,hitting various parts of my body. I was covered with blood,” witness Bajrovic recalled.
The State Prosecution charges the two indictees with having participated in murder, forcible resettlement, torture, rape, forced disappearances and the detention of Bosniaks and Bosnian Croats from the Nevesinje, Kalinovik, Gacko andBileca area, as well as demolishing their property in the course of 1992.
Bajrovic said that, after having been beaten up, he was taken to the toilet,where they gave him a towel to dry up his face. After that he was detained in cell number one, where protected witness A was also brought an hour later.
“During the night we heard screaming. At about 2 a.m. Milko Mucibabic andtwo reserve policemen came. One of them introduced himself as Duke. He examined me and then he started hitting me. Mucibabic was there when he hit me for the first time, but I do not know if he stayed in front of the cell later on,” the witness said.
As indicated by the witness, the following day he was “tied-down, just like the other prisoners, and taken to a detention camp in Bileca.” The witness said that, on their way they were stopped at a checkpoint. They managed to cross the checkpoint only after the policemen “mentioned Minister Kico Savic.”
The witness explained that, by mentioning Kico Savic, they actually meant Krsto Savic, former chief of the Public Safety Station, who was “proclaimed as a Minister for
The indictment alleges that Savic was chief of the Public Safety Station in Trebinje and Mucibabic was policeman.
Bajrovic said that he “was in danger all the time”, while he was detained in the barracks in Bileca. He allegedly stayed there until August 18, 1992. He said that “what happened to the detainees was directly affected by the happenings at the battlefield.” He also stressed that anyone could enter the detention camp and beat the detainees.
Second Prosecution witness Aisa Kazazic said that, after having been captured in 1992, she was beaten and detained in a cinema in Nevesinje.
“Many soldiers and policemen came to my house in Nevesinje. They asked formy children, who had left the town earlier. They took me and my neighbour, Habiba Kazazic, to the cinema, where there were five or six other people. They pinned me to the wall and they started hitting me. From time to time I would fall down due to the beating and there was blood on the walls,” Kazazic recalled.
Kazazic said that, in the evening hours, when they stopped beating her, she was taken to the police station, together with her neighbor Habiba. When they came there, a man said that we “were not of interest to them and they could take us wherever they wanted.” As indicated by the witness, she was taken to the tools factory and then released. She left Nevesinje soon after that.
The trial is due to continue on June 5, 2008.
