Kovacevic: First Witnesses at Bosanski Brod Trial
This post is also available in: Bosnian
Ivan Brizic said that paramilitary formations showed up in Bosanski Brod in northern Bosnia 1992, and that the situation was tense.
“The soldiers walked around drunk, with unkempt hair. Their uniforms were dishevelled and they were shooting around,” Brizic said.
The conflict between Serbs one one side and Muslims and Croats on the other broke out on March 3, 1992.
As the same witness said: “Serb forces fell back 500 metres from the bridge on the Derventa – Bosanski Brod road,” which then became the demarkation line.
At that time, according to the same witness, the Crisis Headquarters were formed, as was the Bosanski Brod Brigade, which had its own Interventions Squad.
Brizic, who was elected president of the Crisis Headquarters, said he did not know who the members of the Interventions Squad were.
Asked by prosecutor Dika Omerovic whether he knew what happened in Sijekovac on March 26, 1992, the witness replied that he heard from the media that “there were a lot of dead people.
“One version was that some people came from across the river and did that, while the other is that groups from Sijekovac did it,” said Brizic.
According to the Bosnian State Prosecution, Kovacevic was a member of the Interventions Squad with the First Bosanski Brod Brigade and committed crimes in collaboration with unidentified members of the Croatian Defence Forces, HOS and Croatian Army, HV, in the village of Sijekovac.
The indictment said Kovacevic took part in an armed attack on the village of Sijekovac, where, together with others, he took 15 people and four children out of houses and into the yard. Most of these people were killed.
A second Prosecution witness, Senad Masic, who in 1992 was Head of the Crime Police in Bosanski Brod, said that he heard about the events in Sijekovac from his colleagues, but no one did anything to investigate what really happened.
“I heard some people were supposed to be disarmed and then there was a clash and shooting. I heard people were killed,” Masic said.
The same witness said he saw the accused Kovacevic after the events in Sijekovac, in mid-April 1992, during a tank attack on the village of Gornje Kolibe.
The trial is scheduled to resume on August 22.
