Selimovic et al: Witness Identifies Mustafic

Testifying at the trial for war crimes committed in Bosanska Krajina,Veljko Radic said he was once beaten up by “guard Emir” during an interrogation. 

“I once had to answer questions in writing. I was asked to write down where I had been and what I had been doing and also to describe the prison in Kamenica. While I was in the corridor, answering questions together with another detainee from Drvar, we were mistreated by guard Emir who had a strange looking eye. I heard his name when a woman greeted him while we were unloading some windows,” Radic said. 

Mehura Selimovic, Adil Ruznic and Mustafic are charged with assisting and abetting the detention of Republika Srpska Army and police members and civilians in detention centers in Bihac, Cazin and Bosanski Petrovac from February 1994 to February 1996.

The indictment alleges that Selimovic was counter intelligence officer, operational officer and deputy chief of the Military Security Service Section with the Fifth Corps of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, AbiH;  Ruznic was assistant commander for security affairs and operational officer with the same section; and Mustafic was a member of the Military Police Unit with the Fifth ABiH Corps. 

Prior to being detained in Bihac, the witness said he was held in various detention centres in Jasenica and Bosanska Krupa where he was physically mistreated. 

“They beat me up, because my hair looked the same as President Radovan Karadzic’s hair. While I was in Krupa they gave me comb, telling me to comb my hair in a different way so the two of us would not look alike,” Radic said, adding he was captured in that area on September 10, 1995. 

The second prosecution witness, Ivo Maric, was captured around Sanski most in October 1995. He then spent three days in “a military base” in the town, together with other detained civilians. 

“There were women and elderly people in those cells in Sanski most. I slept in the corridor for three days. As far as I know, none of these people were beaten. All of them were civilians,” Maric said. 

Maric was transferred from Sanski most to the Zeljava military barracks in Bihac where “a security officer with a moustache examined him many times”. He said he was physically mistreated during the examinations. 

“I always answered their questions in writing. They used to beat me in the beginning, but then they stopped, because they found out that my son was member of the Serbian army. Two men would beat me up all the time. The security officer neither told them to beat me nor not to beat me. They had a cassette player which they turned on so nobody could hear they were beating me up,” Maric said, crying.

During cross-examination, the witness identified a man called Ibrahim Pasic as the security officer who beat him. 

The trial continues on September 22.

D.S.