Koricanske stijene: Piles of Corpses

Jefto Jankovic, former investigative judge with the Basic Court in Banja Luka, testified in defence of indictee Petar Civcic. He said that, on August 21, 1992 he received an order to go to the Vlasic area, because two corpses had been found at Koricanske stijene.

 
I visited the crime scene on August 23, 1992 together with the public prosecutor and crime technicians. Upon our arrival to the location we saw piles of corpses of men. Two crime technicians then recorded the corpses using a camcorder while standing at the edge of the pit” Jankovic said, adding that, according to his estimates, there were about 150 corpses at that location.

 
The State Prosecution charges Civcic, Sasa Zecevic, Radoslav Knezevic, Branko Topola and Marinko Ljepoja with having participated in the murder of about 200 men at Koricanske stijene. The men had allegedly been separated from a convoy of more than 1,000 civilians, who were traveling from Prijedor to Travnik on August 21, 1992.

 
The indictment alleges that Civcic was Commander of the First Section with the Interventions Squad of the Public Safety Station in Prijedor, Zecevic, Ljepoja and Knezevic were members of the Squad and Topola was member of the Territorial Defence.

 
Witness Jankovic told the Court that, while conducting a crime scene inspection at Koricanske stijene he came across two survivors. He took one of them to the military barracks in Skender-Vakuf and the other one to a hospital in Banja Luka.

 
I never went to Koricanske stijene again, because I received an order to transfer those competencies to Dragan Markovic. (…) I prepared a report on the inspection and handed the entire file over to the Prosecution”, Jankovic said.

Milutin Cadjo, former member of the reserve police forces in Prijedor, testified as the second witness at this hearing. He said that, one day after the murders at Koricanske stijene he found out that some people were killed in that area.

 
Dusan Jankovic and I went to some meeting. On our way back Dusan told me that our men had escorted a convoy and killed some men on Mount Vlasic,Cadjo said, adding that he had not received any other information about the things that had happened at Koricanske stijene.

 
In December 2010 the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina pronounced Dusan Jankovic, former Commander of the Public Safety Station in Prijedor, guilty of having given the order for the murders on Mount Vlasic, sentencing him to 27 years™ imprisonment. He has been unavailable to prosecution bodies since.

 
Witness Cadjo said that the Interventions Squad, whose member, as he said, was indictee Civcic, was tasked with assisting in escorting convoys, which were organised by the Red Cross.

 
I was told that Civcic would not be among the convoy escorts on August 21, 1992, but Miroslav Paras would go instead of him, the witness Cadjo said.

S.U.