Kovac: Ordinary Brigade Policeman

Slaven Kraljevic, former Chief of the Intelligence Service with the Vitez Brigade of the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, testified at the retrial of Ante Kovac, saying the indictee was tasked with security arrangements in the Vitez Brigade’s Command building in 1993, so he could not have arrested or detained civilians in Vitez.

“Kovac was just an ordinary brigade policeman. He dealt with security arrangements in the Command building. I regularly reported to the Commander, but I never saw Kovac at those meetings,” Kraljevic said.

In July last year the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina pronounced a first instance verdict, sentencing Ante Kovac to 13 years in prison. He was found guilty of having participated, as Commander of the Military Police Squad with the HVO Vitez Brigade, in rape, unlawful arrest and detention of Bosniak civilians in the Radnicki University premises, cinema hall and public accounting services premises in Vitez during the course of 1993.

The first instance verdict was revoked in April this year and the retrial began shortly thereafter.

Witness Kraljevic told the Court he remembered having examined Mirsad Grabus at the Radnicki University premises in Vitez in late August 1993, after Grabus had been taken out of a vehicle marked with the International Red Cross symbols.

“The Brigade’s Police Unit could not arrest him, as its members were in the Command building. The arrest could therefore only be done by military or civil policemen. I did not mistreat him. He did not tell me he had been mistreated. I spoke to him about the military plans of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina. Given the fact he was aware of the plans, I concluded he was a soldier,” the witness said.

The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina alleges that on August 21, 1993, Kovac ordered several military policemen to stop a vehicle marked with the International Red Cross symbols that was transporting sick Bosniak civilians – witness A, Nadzija Pekmic and Mirsad Grabus – and unlawfully deprive them of their liberty and detain them in the Radnicki University premises.

The indictment alleges that military policemen searched the civilians and took away their valuables, while a person identified only as A was detained in an office inside the Cultural Center building, where Kovac allegedly raped her.

Renata Sero testified at this hearing, saying she was a military policewoman with the Vitez Brigade in 1993 and adding she received a phone call from the Brigade’s Police Unit, asking her to search “an elderly female person”.

“I entered the room and I saw an elderly woman. She said she had undergone an ulcer surgery. When I asked her to show me the part of her body underneath the bandage, she took out a bunch of banknotes. I left the things I found with her on the table. When I finished the search I called a Brigade’s policeman and I went back to the Military Police Command, so I really do not know what happened to those things afterwards,” Sero said.

The Defence examined another protected witness at a closed session at this hearing.

According to the official timetable of trials at the Court, the next hearing is due to take place on September 22.