Krsmanovic: Superficial Information about Family Members’ Fate
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Witnesses Mehmedalija and Ibro Feric received certain pieces of information suggesting that their dearest ones had been killed in Bikavac village, where, according to the charges, about 70 Bosniak civilians were set on fire.
Mehmedalija Feric went from his home village Velika Gostilja to Zepa together with about 30 other men, while his wife, two sons, aged 13 and 11, and mother stayed in the village. They were supposed to be transferred to Zepa later.
“I went back later on to check what had happened to them. They had been taken to a school building in Pionirska Street . My wife and sons allegedly fled through a window one night. A woman told me that she saw them in Bikavac. We heard that the house was set on fire,” Feric said.
As he said, he did not know at the time whether his family was set on fire. He has still no reliable information about their fate.
Krsmanovic is charged with having participated in crimes in Bikavac. Besides that, the former member of the Second Podrinje Light Infantry Brigade of the Republika Srpska Army is on trial for having participated in other murders, rape and forcible disappearances of the Bosniak population from Visegrad.
Witness Ibro Feric heard that his 60-year old mother and sister, who was 22 at the time, were in the school building, jumped through one of the windows and went towards the town
.“My aunt told me that they went towards Bikavac. They most probably were killed there. I heard that the place was set on fire. Nobody has ever told me anything concrete about it,” Feric said.
He too used to live in Velika Gostilja village, which he left after having had an unpleasant encounter with a group of armed uniformed men, who, as he thought, belonged to the “Beli orlovi” paramilitary formation.
“I was in Vlahovici village, when they captured four or five of us. They told us to raise our hands, hit us on our legs and knocked us down. Their faces were painted, so I could not recognise any of them,” the witness said. After that he decided to go to Zepa in order to check whether the road was passable so he could evacuate his family later on.
The trial is due to continue on June 5.
