Kondic et al: Murder in Velagici

Marinko Miljevic, a former member of the Military Police Squad, said that the civilians, who were held in the school building in Velagici village, near Kljuc, “were simply killed”. 
 
“In the evening hours buses came and drove the Muslim men from the school building to Kljuc. When they were taken out of the school building a blonde, bearded man, whose name I cannot recall, simply killed them. Before that, two men, known as Godfathers, questioned and killed a few people,” said Miljevic, who testified as a Prosecution witness.
 
This witness said that a person named Goran Amidzic, the then commander, tried to prevent the murder of the civilians, adding that the perpetrators of the crime were dressed in “military uniform”.
 
Vinko Kondic, Bosko Lukic and Marko Adamovic are charged with having participated in organizing a group of people and abetting them to commit genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the course of 1991 and 1992.
 
The indictment alleges that a certain number of men from Velagici local community responded to calls asking them to report to the checkpoint in Velagici on June 1, 1992. After that military policemen detained them in the old school building. 
 
In the evening hours of the same day members of the Military Police Squad forced the men out and shot them, killing at least 78 people.
 
“Two trucks and a dredger came. They loaded the bodies and drove them towards Laniste. People were saying that some of them survived, but I do not know,” Miljevic explained, adding that the military policemen were asked to report to the Safety Services Center in Banja Luka afterwards.

The second Prosecution witness, Zeljko Radojcic, was a member of the reserve police forces in Kljuc in 1992. He said that indictee Kondic was the Chief of the Public Safety Station in Kljuc in that period.

This witness told the Court that while performing his tasks at the checkpoint in Velagici he saw a group of men. He said that he was told that some unknown people were killed later that day, but he did not say when exactly.
 
“I heard other policemen telling each other in the evening hours on that day that some murders had happened, but I do not know if those were the same people I had seen earlier,” Radojcic explained.

The trial is due to continue on Wednesday, May 14.