Policeman ‘Raped Male Prisoners’

Prosecution witness Ahmo Zulanovic told the court in Sarajevo that he was captured on May 8, 1992, in the village of Kamenica. He said that he and a protected witness at the trial, codenamed M-1, set off towards the woods, when they were intercepted by two soldiers who blindfolded them, tied their hands and took them on a truck to Visegrad.

Zulanovic said they were taken to Visegrad police station, where they were put in a room with 20 other detainees.

“They were all civilians in there. Men. There was only one woman, who was tied to the radiator by the door. A lot of them were bruised and beaten, but no one was saying anything,” said Zulanovic.

Five days after they were brought to the police station and after two beatings, he said, two uniformed men took him down to the basement. They brought another prisoner into the same room.

“They immediately made us take our underwear off in order to make sure we were circumcised. When we did it, they took their underwear off. One soldier took me, the other took the other prisoner. The soldier who was holding me asked me whether I had ever given a blow job, and if I had not, now was my chance to do it, and ordered me: ‘Suck!’”

Zulanovic said he had to comply. He saw that the other prisoner was also sexually abused, but he did not know what was exactly happening to him, because he “could not watch all that”.

Ex-fighters Milos Pantelic, Predrag Milisavljevic and Ljubomir Tasic are being tried for participating in murders, the forced transfer of people and other inhumane acts.

Milisavljevic is also charged with sexually abusing men at the Visegrad police station.

The indictment says that the offences were committed in 1992 when Milisavljevic and Pantelic were police reservists in Visegrad and Tasic was serving with the Bosnian Serb Army.

During cross-examination, Zulanovic said he did not know the person who sexually abused him, nor could he recognise his alleged abuser in the courtroom.

Protected witness M-1 was 15 in 1992 when he was taken to the police station in Visegrad.

“I remember the bloody walls. I remember how afraid I was, I was a child and I remember wondering how walls could be so bloody. I could not wrap my mind around it,” he said.

Like witness Zulanovic, one evening M-1 was taken to the basement.

“The soldier asked for the youngest prisoner. That was me. He took me down to the basement, to the office. There was a uniformed man inside, he talked to me and seemed genuinely nice and like someone who want to help me,” explained M-1.

He said that the policeman asked him whether he had sexual intercourse with a man before and told him now was his chance.

“I cried and pleaded, I was telling him I am only a child and nothing’s my fault. I was sitting, he approached me, took off his underwear and put his sex organ into my mouth… In the beginning I could not do it, but he pushed and beat the back of my head… Then he told me to take off my pants. He told me it won’t hurt and it would be over quickly… He bended me over the table, stood behind me and I waited for him to do what he intended,” said M-1.

He said that at that moment they heard someone approaching, so the soldier stopped and told him to put his clothes on.

“I have trauma from this event to this very day. I am a psychiatric patient anyway. When I am under therapy, I am good, but when I’m not, I have nightmares all night. And the same sense of fear as when I was a child,” said M-1.

Both witnesses said they did not know who abused them but were told by other prisoners that it was a man they knew as ‘The Twin’.

The trial is scheduled to resume on April 9.