Peric et al: Witness Describes Capture of Husband, Sons

Testifying for the Prosecution of Bosnia and Herzegovina, Dzemila Suljic says that her husband and two sons were taken from Vihovici village, Kalinovik municipality and detained in the summer of 1992, adding that she still has not found her children’s remains.

Dzemila Suljic said that on June 25, 1992, police arrested most of Bosniak men from Vihovici, including her son Mirsad, and detained them in the Miladin Radojevic school building in Kalinovik.

“Police took all other men from our village who were hiding in the surrounding forests to ‘Barutni magacin’ a month later. My other son and husband were taken away with them,” Dzemila Suljic said.

Witness Suljic said that she saw indictees Predrag Terzic and Spasoje Doder during the course of those arrests.

“Police officer Terzic was the chief. He threatened me by saying that he would arrest me unless I asked my son and husband to come out of the woods…He took them on a trip to death,” Dzemila Suljic said, adding that she found her husband’s remains “in a tunnel, near Miljevina”, but she is still searching for her two sons’ remains.

The State Prosecution charges Terzic, Doder, Milan Peric and Aleksandar Cerovina with crimes committed in Kalinovik.

The indictment alleges that the former members of the Public Safety Station in Kalinovik participated in crimes against the non-Serb population from that area in 1992. They allegedly unlawfully arrested civilians and took them to the Miladin Radojevic school building and “Barutni magacin” (“Gunpowder Depot”) detention camp, where most of them were killed.

Second Prosecution witness Remza Surkovic said that in late July 1992, some policemen, including indictees Terzic and Cerovina, came to Vihovici village and arrested all able-bodied men, whom they then detained in “Barutni magacin”.

“My mother begged Terzic, who was reading names of men from a list, not to take my brother away. He said: ‘You can drop dead, but I am taking him away!’ Those words have rung in my head for 20 years already,” Surkovic said, adding that she found her brother’s remains after the war.

A former policeman from Kalinovik, Nihad Suljic, testified at this hearing as well. He said that apart from his father and grandfather, he was “the only man from Vihovici village who was not arrested and detained” in the summer of 1992.

“They treated me in a different way because all of them were my colleagues from Kalinovik and probably also because my brother was a military officer in Belgrade,” Nihad Suljic said, adding that he was transferred, together with his father, to Podgorica, Montenegro in August 1992 and then to Sjenica, Serbia, where he lived during the course of the war.

The next hearing is due to be held on June 21.

J.Đ.