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Prosecution witness Asim Balihodzic, a former policeman from Bugojno, testified about the work of the Commission for finding and identifying missing and killed persons from Bugojno Municipality in 1993. He said he was a member of this Commission along with four other persons.
According to Balihodzic’s statement, in 1993 the Commission identified the bodies of 104 Croats and 58 Bosniaks in the Bugojno area. He said there were no “massacredbodies” among the Croat victims.
Balihodzic was testifying at the trial of Senad Dautovic, Nisvet Gasal, Musajb Kukavica and Enes Handzic, who are charged with crimes against Croat civilians from Bugojno.Gasal and Kukavica are charged with responsibility for the functioning of the”Iskra” detention camp, while Enes Handzic, former assistant commander for security with the 307th Brigade of the Bosnian Army, and Senad Dautovic, former member of the Joint Staff of the Bosnian Army for Bugojno, are charged with planning and participating in the capture of civilians in Bugojno.
The witness told the Court that he had suggested and Senad Dautovic had agreed to”let a few Croats become involved in the work of the Commission”,adding that those men were detained in the gymnasium in Bugojno and “Iskra” stadium at the time.
“I proposed my former working colleagues, policemen Mile Behara, Ivica Viskovic anda person named Rizo. As of that time they accompanied me every time. I did not have any written permission for taking them with me, but I never faced any problems in the gymnasium or at “Iskra” stadium because of that. I would pick them up and return them and nobody ever stopped me from doing it,” Balihodzic added.
Answering indictee Gasal’s questions in the course of cross-examination, the witness said that “the three colleagues” never said anything bad about manager Gasal and the stadium prison, adding that he knew that detainees were “allowed to go home to bathe”.
The witness recalled Ante Kapetanovic, father of the late Vlatko, claiming that hecame there every day searching for his son who, he said, had been taken from the Catholic School Center in Bugojno.Ante Kapetanovic testified on October 22, 2008, claiming that, after his son’s body had been found, he noticed that it had “many wounds caused by beating and a broken skull”.
“Vlatko Kapetanovic’s corpse was decaying when we found it. He had long hair. He was dressed in military trousers. We handed his body to his father, who then buried him. As far as I could see there were no signs of torture on the body,”the witness said.
The trial is due to continue on January 21, 2009.
