Dronjak: Detainee Barking Inside a Dog House

Mile Miokovic, former member of the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, said that members of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, captured him in November 1994, adding he was detained under difficult conditions in the Kamenica detention camp in Drvar for seven months.

“You sleep, you eat, you take care of your needs, you die – all that in the same room…” the witness said.

The Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina charges Ratko Dronjak, as Commander and Manager of Kamenica detention camp and the Slavko Rodic school prison in Drvar, with having participated in torture, murder and other inhumane acts committed against non-Serb detainees.

Miokovic told the Court that upon his arrival in Kamenica, he had to go between two lines of “Serb soldiers, who were detained in the detention camp”. He said that those soldiers hit him with wooden sticks and he fainted after having been hit on his head. The witness said that detainees were beaten outside the camp every day, adding that two of them died after having been beaten.

“They took Marijan Niksic out on the New Year’s eve. We found him dead on the following morning. He had told us: ‘If they take me out once more, I shall not survive it’,” Miokovic recalled.

Witness Muharem Beganovic testified at this hearing too. He said he was brought to Kamenica detention camp in August 1992.

“They used to take us out. Guards forced us to sing Chetnik songs. The man who acted as a conductor would be hit a couple of times. I had to go inside a dog house and bark. We even had to eat grass,” Beganovic said.

The witness said he saw two guards taking Kemal Sepic out of an isolation cell and a few other people out of the detention camp. He said that those men never came back to the camp.

“I watched them from the toilets. I recognised him. He looked spiritless and he lacked one ear. (…) They were driven away in a minivan. Later on we heard that they had been buried in a hole,” said the witness, who left the detention camp in November 1992.

The two witnesses said they heard that Dronjak was Manager of Kamenica.

At the end of the hearing State Prosecutor Dzemila Begovic filed a custody extension motion, saying the reasons for keeping Dronjak in detention “have not changed”. Dronjak’s Defence asked the Court to terminate the custody measure.

Dronjak has been held in custody since January 2010 out of concern that he might influence witnesses, accomplices and concealers and disturb the public order and peace.

The Court will render a decision concerning the custody extension motion at a later stage. The trial is due to continue on February 17.