Krsmanovic: Covered in Bruises Due to Beating

Witness Fatma Zukic said that her husband was taken to police premises in Visegrad on May 24, 1992 and that he was beaten up.

“After they had taken him away, I searched for him. I saw him in the Police building. He was beaten up, covered in bruises, blood was pouring from his ear…He just told me to leave the town with our children,” Zukic said, adding that this was the last time she saw her husband.

The witness said that she found his body nine years later.

“His body was washed up on the river bank. That is what local residents told me. They buried him in the vicinity of that place. He was most probably killed on the bridge in Visegrad,” the witness said.

A second Prosecution witness, who testified at the trial of Oliver Krsmanovic, said that he heard that the indictee was in front of the burning mosque.

“I was in my yard, watching mosques in Visegrad burning. My daughter-in-law came and told me that she saw Oliver Krsmanovic, a Miladin Savic, Zeljko Lelek and two other men in front of the mosque. She said that they were doing a dance and somebody was taking pictures of them,” witness Kasim Dedic said, adding that his daughter-in-law did not see who had set the mosque on fire.

Krsmanovic, former member of the Second Podrinje Light Infantry Brigade of the Republika Srpska Army, VRS, is charged with having participated and assisted in the murders, rape and forcible disappearances of the Bosniak population from Visegrad.

The indictment charges him with having assisted in the murder of six people on June 7, 1992. Those people were allegedly taken from Varda factory and killed on River Drina. In addition, he is charged with having set about 70 civilians on fire, acting in collaboration with Milan Lukic and others, in Meho Aljic’s house in Bikavac village on June 27.

Milan Lukic, former leader of “Beli orlovi” (“White Eagles”) paramilitary formation, was sentenced, under a first instance verdict pronounced by the Hague Tribunal, to life imprisonment.

In February 2009 the Appellate Chamber of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina pronounced a second instance verdict, sentencing Zeljko Lelek to 16 years in prison for crimes committed in Visegrad.

Witness Hasan Korac told the Court that his step-brother Resad Mucovski and Fadil Zukic were taken to the Police Station in Visegrad and that they went missing. As he said, their bodies were found in Slap village. Korac said that witness OK-12, who was present in the house, when they were taken away, informed him about it.

“Witness OK-12 was in the attic. He saw that they were taken away. He told me that the indictee participated in the taking of people and cleansing the village,” the witness said.

The Defence of the indictee reacted by presenting a statement given by the witness to the Public Safety Center in Gorazde on April 27, 1995, explaining that he did not mention the indictee in that statement.

The witness said that he had lost his son right before giving the statement, so “there is a possibility that I forgot to mention that”.

The next hearing is due to be held on October 9.
M.B.