Kondic et al: Half Dead

Prosecution witness Mirsad Dervisevic, testifying at the trial for crimes committed in Kljuc, said that the non-Serb population was taken to the police station “as per Vinko Kondic’s order”, adding that he was brutally beaten several times during the course of 1992.

Kondic did not attend the examination of this witness due to “poor health”, despite the fact that a medical report issued by the Medical Service of the State Court Detention Unit indicates that he is capable of attending the trial.

“After they had told us to come to the school building in Velagici, I went there, together with my father and other village residents in late May 1992. Upon our arrival we saw members of the reserve forces. Later on, a person named Simo Vujicic came, telling me that he would take me to the police station in Kljuc for an examination. He saved my life, because all the other men, including my father and father-in-law, were killed later on,” Dervisevic said.

The Prosecution charges Vinko Kondic, Bosko Lukic and Marko Adamovic with helping to organise a group of people and abetting them to commit genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in 1991 and 1992.

Dervisevic told the Court that after he was arrested a person named Vujicic told him that “Secretary Kondic” had said that all non-Serb men should be taken to the Public Safety Station in Kljuc.
 
“When I was brought to the Station, I saw Kondic, who invited Simo to his office because he realized that he was trying to save me. As soon as Simo left, the reserve soldiers started beating me. After that I fainted. Then they carried me to the basement and beat me again,” Dervisevic said.

The witness said that before he was taken to the Public Safety Station basement, he was examined by a person named Mico Buhac. He said that two reserve soldiers brutally beat him with bats on this occasion.

“First they poured water on my back and then they beat me with bats,” Dervisevic said.
 
The witness said that he was among other men who were transferred by bus to a school building in Sitnica and, eight days later, to the “detention camp of death” in Manjaca.
 
“When I entered the bus I was half dead. On our way to Sitnica they provoked and beat us. I absconded beneath a bus seat, but a person named Ster stuck a pocket knife in my left kidney. I was covered with blood,” the witness said.

Dervisevic said that detainees were often taken from Manjaca detention camp in order to be beaten, adding that some of them were killed.

“One night a person named Zoka called out some detainees’ names. I did not want to answer when he read my name. The following morning I saw Omer Filipovic and Esad Bender lying down on the ground. Muhamed Filipovic told me that they had been killed,” said Dervisevic, who was exchanged on December 16, 1992.

The trial is due to continue on Wednesday, March 25.