Croat Fighter Scorched a Cross on Muslims Face
This post is also available in: Bosnian
The witness, Emir Korman, said he was abused on July 7, 1993, at a fire station in Prozor, where he had been taken as a prisoner of the Croatian Defence Council. After he sat in an armchair, he said, Jukic started burning him.
He took a Ronhill cigarette and lit it. He dragged on it two or three times and started burning my face. He made a cross of out of burn marks, said Korman.
He added that the defendant put out the cigarette on his nose and then took him to another room, brutally beat him up and started burning his beard.
He said Jukic told him to take his jacket off and lie across a chair. He took a baton and hit me on my back whenever he could, said the witness.
Korman said Jukic then took a gun from the soldier at the door. I thought, these are my last moments. I was waiting for him to shoot, he said.
Jukic squeezed the trigger, said the witness, but only flames came out of the barrel, scorching his beard and skin.
Jukic, a former member of the Croatian Defence Council, is charged with leaving burn marks on the plaintiffs face with a cigarette, making a cross on his right cheek.
He is also being tried for other war crimes in Prozor, including the murders and forced resettlement of Bosniaks.
Korman said that he was then taken with other prisoners to the police station jail in Prozor, and from there to the Dretelj detention camp near Capljina.
He explained that at the Dretelj camp there was a roll call of prisoners, and when his name was read out, Jukic took him to a hangar and brutally beat him again.
Korman also said he had been offered 5,000 Euros not to testify by a man whom he refused to name.
The second witness at Thursdays hearing, Ekrem Hubijar, said he witnessed Jukic burn Kormans face once or twice with a cigarette at the fire station and that the defendant then took a lighter and burned a cross into his face.
A third witness, Fadil Zec, testified about the state in which he found Emir Korman at the fire station.
He was scorched, burnt, bruised He had cigarette-sized holes in his face. You could clearly see the cross, Zec recalled. The witness said that Korman told him at the police station jail in Prozor that Jukic had done this to him.
Jukic’s trial will resume on April 4.
