Koricanske stijene: Unknown Convoy Escorts

Nebojsa Pantic and Dragomir Markovic, who appeared as Prosecution witnesses, said they saw “a large number of corpses” at Koricanske stijene in August 1992. The two men claim that they were told that “the convoy escorts” were responsible for the death of those people.

“It was Saturday when I received a phone call from Stojan Zupljanin, Chief of the Safety Services Center in Banja Luka. He said they needed me there. When I came to the office, I saw him and Milan Puhacic, who then told me that several non-Serbs had been killed in the Knezevo area,” said Pantic, an ex-officio attorney with the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina, who was Public Prosecutor in Banja Luka during 1992.

Pantic said that, on the same day, without telling which date it was, he went to the military Staff in Knezevo, accompanied by Jefto Jankovic, a former Investigative Judge. Upon their arrival they were informed that five buses had been driving civilians from Prijedor to an exchange, but those civilians had been shot by “convoy escorts”.

The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina charges Damir Ivankovic, Zoran Babic, Gordan Djuric, Milorad Radakovic, Milorad Skrbic, Ljubisa Cetic, Dusan Jankovic and Zeljko Stojnic, former members of the Public Safety Station in Prijedor and Emergency Interventions Police Squad, with participation in the shooting of about 200 civilians at Koricanske stijene on August 21, 1992.

Pantic said that, prior to going to the crime scene on the following day, he attended a meeting held in the Safety Services Center in Banja Luka. At this meeting they were “briefly informed” about the event and his future tasks.

“I went to the crime scene, accompanied by the others. We could sense some unpleasant smell. On the ground I saw automatic and semi-automatic bullet cartridges. I saw several bodies at the bottom of the abyss. They were lying there on top of each other,” Pantic explained.

This witness explained that “a uniformed person, a woman and a thin man” came to the crime scene a short time later, addressing the policemen by telling them: “Come on heroes. Kill this one as well”.

“The thin man was one of the survivors. We tried to speak to him, but he was scared. The crime-scene inspection was done quickly. We were told that we would continue the following day. In the morning we were told that there would be no crime-scene inspection because the front lines were so close. We were also told that the inspection was now under the responsibility of the police,” Pantic said, adding that he found out, later on, that the military prosecution had taken over the case.

The second Prosecution witness, Markovic, said that he was involved, in his capacity as inspector with the Safety Services Center in Banja Luka, in the investigation concerning the shooting of a large number of people at Koricanske stijene in August 1992.

“At the working meeting it was said that the biggest problem was to clean the terrain due to the large number of corpses and their inaccessibility. Upon our arrival at the scene, I saw a large number of corpses at one place. I started counting them standing on the top of the cliff. They were dressed in civilian clothes. There were more than 140 of them in the abyss,” Markovic recalled.

This witness said that he tried to identify the victims. He made criminal reports against the unknown people for their participation in the crime.

“We knew that those were policemen or soldiers who escorted the convoy. I think they were policemen. I remember the survivors telling us that some men, dressed in police uniforms, had shot them,” Markovic said.

The two witnesses told the Court that they asked the police authorities to provide them with a list of policemen, who escorted the convoy, and help them explain the crime, but their efforts were unsuccessful.

The trial is due to continue on Tuesday, May 12.