Gazdic: Indictee as Hope and Misery

“He just grabbed her and took her to the room. I stayed there. I could just hear her beg him: ‘I am a mother of two. You know where my husband is’,” witness J said.

The indictment charges Gazdic, former member of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, with having treated Bosniak women in an inhumane manner in Foca from April 1992 to March 1993. He is charged with having raped several Bosniaks, including twelve-year old girls.

Witness J said that the female person, who previously testified at this trial under the pseudonym of C, was married to her brother-in-law’s son and that they lived in the same house in Foca.

She told the Court that she left the house, along with C, accompanied by Miodrag Nikacevic, whom the witness knew. He allegedly told them that they would be exchanged. However, Nikacevic and another soldier drove them to some house, near Miljevina. In 2010 the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina pronounced a second instance verdict, sentencing Nikacevic to ten years in prison for crimes committed in Foca.

“One of the soldiers took me upstairs and raped me. (…) C stayed downstairs. As I was coming down the stairs, I heard her voice,” witness J said.
As she said, after that Nikacevic and a soldier nicknamed Tuta took them to an apartment in Foca, near the police station.

“When they brought us in, I recognized Jasko Gazdic. I thought that he would save us. He was born to an ethnically mixed marriage,” witness J said.

As she said, witness J and C stayed in the room, talking to Gazdic and another soldier for two or three hours. After that the indictee took C away, while she stayed with the unknown soldier, who raped her. She said that they were allowed to go home on the following morning, but she did not speak to C about what happened in the room.

Responding to Defence’s questions, the witness confirmed that she appeared at this trial, because C asked her to do that. Gazdic’s Defence attorney Dusko Tomic wanted to know why the witness said, in an earlier statement, that they were taken to the room right after their arrival and why she failed to mention that they first spoke for a few hours.

“I may have made a mistake, but try to put yourself in my shoes. (…) I was lost after the thing that happened in the house,” witness J said.

Tomic announced that he would request a confrontation of witnesses J and C, because, as he said, they gave different statement about what happened.

The trial is due to continue on Wednesday, April 4.
M.T.