Lalovic: Raped and Marked for Life

“Lalovic was on duty when I was raped,” protected witness O said, adding that other rapes and murders took place while he was working at the detention centre. She identified the indictee in the courtroom, saying that he used to point his finger at women, who were then taken to clean the houses of “Seselj’s men” in Mjehovina, where they were raped.

“Ustasa pointed his finger at the women, who were then taken to Mjehovina village to clean the houses of Seselj’s men. All those women and girls were raped. I know that one of them offered resistance, so they chained her to a bed.

“Ustasa, whose full name we did not know, threatened us by saying that if anything happened to his brother, who was on the front line, he would kill all of us,” the witness said.

The State Prosecution charges Slavko Lalovic, known as Ustasa, former member of the reserve police forces with the Public Safety Station in Kalinovik, with allowing soldiers to enter the Miladin Radojevic school building, where he worked as prison guard, and commit violence against unlawfully detained civilians.

The indictment alleges that in August 1992, the indictee intimidated and terrorised civilians who were detained in the school building. The Prosecution alleges that Lalovic enabled two members of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, to enter the school and rape one female detainee at the end of August 1992.

Witness O said that she and other civilians from Gacko, who were detained in the school building in Kalinovik, asked the soldiers to kill them, as they could no longer stand the rapes and other forms of torture committed against them.

“It would have been better if they had killed us. In this way, I have been marked for life,” the witness said, adding that she heard that some detainees were killed and saw a truck driving their bodies away.

Second Prosecution witness Fadila Hatic recalled cleaning blood in a classroom on the first floor of the school building, where, she said, Edin Bico, Hasim Hatic, Dzafer Keso, Mujo Pervan and others were killed.

“In addition to the men who were killed in the school building, sisters Pervan and one boy did not survive. They were taken away. They never came back,” Hatic said.

The trial is due to continue on March 24 this year.