Bosnian Serb Prisoners ‘Regularly Abused’ at Dretelj Camp

Prosecution witness Branislav Simic the court on Tuesday that he was assaulted on several occasions after being locked up in the Dretelj camp near Capljina on July 20, 1992.

“When they put us into the hangar, there were people already there. They were beaten, dirty, bruised. They were all silent. There was fear suspended in the air. It was really sad,” said Simic.

He said that prisoners in the Dretelj camp were regularly beaten and they “suffered the most” when guards came to the hangar at night and called out individual prisoners.

“At that moment you knew you would get a beating. The most important thing was not to fall down when they beat you, because if you fall – you’re finished!” explained the witness.

In his testimony Simic said he saw defendants Ivan Zelenika and Edib Buljubasic at the camp, but they did not physically abuse him. Asked by the prosecutor, Remzija Smailovic, whether he knew who Dretelj’s warden was, Simic said it was defendant Srecko Herceg.

“I heard their names from prisoners, although they introduced themselves to us as well. They never hid who they were,” said Simic.

He added that he heard from prisoners that guard Ivan Medic was much feared in the camp, and that he beat people the hardest, although he said that he did not see Medic during his stay in Dretelj.

Zelenika is charged with Herceg, Buljubasic, Medic and Marina Grubisic-Fejzic, former members of the Croatian Defence Forces, with crimes committed against imprisoned Serb civilians in 1992 in Dretelj.

According to the indictment, Zelenika was an officer of the Croatian Defence Forces, Herceg was a former commander of the Dretelj military prison, Buljubasic was former member of the Croatian Defence Forces and deputy commander of the Dretelj barracks, and Medic and Grubisic-Fejzic were former guards in Dretelj.

The indictment specifies that they all took part in torture and in forcing prisoners to perform hard labour, and several people died from the abuse.

Simic said that he was told there was sexual harassment in the camp, and one night he heard soldiers forced prisoners to touch each other’s sex organs or put them in their mouths.

“All kinds of things went on. I did not go through it all, but I saw it. What I did not see, I heard. There was classic abuse. One prisoner, for example, had to be a cow, the other a bull. There was a situation when they made a prisoner sniff a dog’s crotch and I heard women were raped too,” said Simic.

He explained that during his imprisonment in the camp, only Serbs were locked up there, and there was a hangar in which women were held. He said that he was held at Dretelj until August 17, 1992.

During cross-examination, defendants Zelenika and Buljubasic apologised to the witness for everything he went through during his imprisonment.

The trial is set to resume on May 21.