Bosnian Serb Fighters Tortured Detainees at School
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A protected witness codenamed S-1 told Babics trial in Sarajevo on Monday that during his imprisonment in the Vuk Karadzic school in Bratunac in eastern Bosnia in May 1992, he was beaten, witnessed a brutal murder, and saw Bosniaks tortured in various ways.
The witness said that he once saw a severed head in the schools toilet and that he watched the horrific killing of a prisoner whose belly was cut open and who was hit on his internal organs.
He said that another prisoner once told him that the defendant Babic, then commander of the military police in Bratunac, had assaulted him.
Savo made him put a hand on the table and broke his fingers with the butt of a handgun, said S-1 in the original deposition he gave to Bosnias State Investigation and Protection Agency in 2007, which was presented to him at Mondays hearing.
S-1 confirmed this was correct and said that the prisoner had showed him his broken fingers.
He said the prisoner was later found in a mass grave, along with another 20 people who were kept in the school when he was moved to the town of Pale.
The witness recalled that once he saw the defendant in the school, standing near a man who threatened to kill all the prisoners. I recognised Savo Babic. I knew him since I was little, said S-1.
The prosecution charges Babic with ordering, carrying out and failing to prevent the imprisonment of non-Serb civilians in the school in May 1992.
Around 400 detained civilians were beaten and tortured every day, and several dozen were killed or died as a result of the conditions at the school, the indictment alleges.
S-1 said he heard that around 85 people lost their lives in the school, while over 200 people were killed in the hangar near the school, among them teenagers.
There was the Zukic kid there. He and his father were killed in the school. This kid who was sixth grade was the youngest child killed in the school, said the witness.
He added that nine people suffocated inside the school because of a lack of oxygen in the gymnasium where they were imprisoned.
The defence will cross-examine the witness on April 8.
