Krsmanovic: Bosniak Villagers Recall Wartime Abductions

At the trial for war crimes committed in Visegrad, a witness who was 13 at the time said that she saw her father for the last time on October 22, 1992.

He was one of those travelling on a bus from Sjeverin in Serbia who was abducted and afterwards disappeared without a trace.

Dzenana Sukic said that after returning from school, her mother told her on that day that father was abducted from the bus while he was going to work.

“My mother heard this over the radio, in the news. And that’s everything we knew. In the beginning we had not a lot of information, but later people started to talk. We heard that Muslims were abducted from the bus, taken to Bosnia and killed,” said Sukic.

The prosecutor, Adnan Gulamovic, presented the witness with photographs of captured people taken at the Vilina Vlas hotel in Visegrad from which she recognised her father.

“That’s the last we heard of them. That they were tortured, killed and thrown from the bridge in Visegrad,” said Sukic.

She added that she heard from her mother and cousin during the war that Serb paramilitaries Milan Lukic and Oliver Krsmanovic were responsible.

Krsmanovic is charged with having participated, together with Milan Lukic and others, in the capture of 16 Bosniak civilians from Serbia, who were traveling by bus to Priboj, in the Rudo municipality, on October 22, 1992.

They allegedly took the civilians to the Vilina Vlas hotel, where they beat them with wooden batons.

Milan Lukic has already been given a life sentence from the Hague Tribunal for crimes committed in Visegrad.

Another witness who testified at the hearing was Ramiz Catovic. He said that his 20-year old son was on the bus in October 1992. He said that he had not found the remains of his son to this very day, although he heard that he had been killed in the woods near the Vilina Vlas hotel.

“My Ramahudin went to work to Priboj and he’s gone now. There’s no country in Europe I did not write to, pleading to find those people. And nothing. He’s still gone,” said Catovic.

He explained that he heard that people from the group led by Lukic, who he knew only in passing, were responsible for the abduction.

The trial is scheduled to resume on February 19.