Bojadzic: Quietly Talking about Rape

Witness Vesna Milicevic told the Court that she was detained, along with other local residents of Doljani village, near Jablanica, in The Battle of Neretva Museum on July 28, 1993, following an attack by some unknown army.

“My husband climbed on the roof of our house and said that everything was on fire,” she said, adding that she then took her two small children and ran together with her sister-in-law “through the storm of bullets” to the house of her husband’s sister.

Milicevic said that women, children and men were transported to the museum by trucks in the afternoon. As she said, a little later some people entered the museum. Her father told her to keep her head down, so she could only see a man “pointing his finger” at somebody.

She said that she did not personally see witnesses D and H being taken out, but people said, the following morning, that they had been taken away and raped.

“I heard it from my sister. People passed it on to each other quietly,” she said.

She said that the conditions in the museum were difficult. While crying, she recalled that a guard brought her a crate, so she could lay her seven-month old baby in it.

Bojadzic, former Deputy Commander of the Zulfikar Unit of the Army of Bosnia and Herzegovina, is on trial for beating and sexual abuse of Croat prisoners in The Battle of Neretva museum, as well as rape.

Testifying at this hearing, Kristina Martinovic spoke about the attack on Doljani on July 28, 1993 and her stay at the Museum. She recalled her first night in that building, when an unknown man came in and said: “You and you, come out”.

“I saw that person, but I cannot remember who he was,” she said, adding that witnesses D and H came back to the room on the following morning, holding their heads down, and sat down.

The witness said that, after having left the museum, she spoke to the protected witnesses, who told her that they had been raped.

Responding to questions by Bojadzic’s Defence attorney Edina Residovic, the two witnesses confirmed that they were released from the museum a few days after having been brought to it and that they went to their relatives’ in Jablanica, adding that other detainees could do that as well.

The trial is due to continue on January 24.