Babic: Blood on Neck
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They were mistreating him. I could see that all of them were sitting on the floor. Most of them were Muslims. One of them was naked from his waist up. A man cut him with a knife. While he was doing it, two other men were standing by his side,” said Mirna Nedeljkovic, former member of military police with the Republika Srpska Army, VRS.
After having been presented with a statement she gave to the State Investigation and Protection Agency, SIPA in April 2008, the witness said that she saw that Serb volunteers mistreated three prisoners, not only one, using a knife.
Nedeljkovic told the Court that she entered the gym, because she wanted to rescue her neighbour Idriz Salkic, who too was injured with a knife. She said that he had scars, because they extinguished cigarettes on his body.
“Idriz had a cut on his neck. It looked as if he had been cut with knife, as if somebody had tried to slaughter him,” the witness said, adding that she managed to rescue him the following day.
Nedeljkovic explained that she saved her neighbour Salkic in May 1992, after having bribed one of the volunteers.
“I did it willfully through the most notorious volunteer. Human life was cheap at the time. I told him: ‘I’ll give you a bottle of whiskey and a box of cigarettes if you rescue that man’,” she said.
She said that she joined the military police forces owing to indictee Savo Babic, who, in her opinion, was a personification of “a good and humane man”, adding that she had confidence in him.
“Babic protected the Muslim people. He and his family faced problems because of that. This was why he left military police,” the witness said.
The Prosecution charges Babic, former Commander of military police with the VRS in Bratunac, with having ordered, committed and failed to prevent the detention of non-Serb civilians in the Vuk Karadzic school building in Bratunac in May 1992
The indictment alleges that about 400 detained civilians lived in fear for their lives. They were beaten up and tortured every day. Several tens of civilians were killed or died due to bad conditions in the school building.
Nedeljkovic said that the military policemen did not participate in the arrest of Bosniaks, but they were just tasked with taking food to the prisoners.
The trial is due to continue on December 17.
