Indictee’s Face Covered with Stocking

Witness Abida Ibisevic said that soldiers came to her house and forced her and her father-in-law to come out in the morning on May 9, 1992.
“While we were walking along the road with other neighbours, I heard a gunshot. At that moment I saw my father-in-law falling down,” Ibisevic said, adding that she was “forced to go to the shopping mall”, along with a group of local residents. She said that a few soldiers and a woman nicknamed Bela had already been there. The witness said that, while they were standing in front of mall, she heard that they called a neighbour’s name out and took him behind a house. She then heard a gunshot. Ibisevic said that they took some other men behind a nearby building and beat them up.
“All of a sudden we saw those soldiers and the men coming back. They were just a few metres away from us,” she said. The witness told the Court that indictee Mladjenovic too, came to the location in front of the shopping mall, where they were standing.
“He approached Bela, took his mask off, kissed her and said: ‘We have made it, cousin’,” the witness said, adding that she was sure that it was Mladjenovic, because they “grew up and shared food with each other”. Some time later women and children got on a bus. While she was in the bus, the witness saw Bela taking a fifteen-year old boy out of the bus and slaughtering him.
Mladjenovic and Zivkovic are charged with having committed crimes against humanity by arresting and physically and mentally abusing the Bosniak civilian population and pillaging their property, as part of a widespread and systematic attack on the Hranca and Glogova villages, Bratunac municipality, on May 3 and 9, 1992. Second witness Saha Muminovic from Adzici hamlet, Glogova village, said that she was among the local residents, who were forced to go to a neighbour’s field on May 9, adding that she saw indictee Mladjenovic in the field. “Soldiers came from the direction of Hranca. Mr. Mladjenovic was with them. The indictee said: ‘All these should be slaughtered’. Another soldier then repeated his words,” Muminovic said. Dejan Bogdanovic, Defence attorney of the indictee, asked the witness to describe the stocking that was pulled over Mladjenovic’s face. She said that she could not remember, but that his eyes and nose could be seen. When asked by Trial Chamber member Minka Kreho what colour Najdan Mladjenovic’s eyes were, the witness said they were “black”.

The trial is due to continue on May 7.