Bosniaks Recall Deadly Visegrad Prisoner Convoy

Prosecution witness Mula Omerovic told the court on Tuesday that defendant Ljupko Tasic sent a man to her village in 1992 to inform Bosniak civilians that a convoy would take them from their homes.

The day after the announcement, the village’s Bosniak population was moved to another village, Bosanska Jagodina, where she saw Tasic. The villagers were then taken to the main square in Visegrad, where buses were waiting for them.

She said that the convoy set off with a police escort and stopped at the Isceric Hill, where a jeep full of soldiers arrived. “They chased the children and women out [of the buses], leaving the men inside,” said Omerovic.

The witness said that she was told that the men were being taken to be exchanged for Bosnian Serb prisoners. However, she later learned her husband and the others had been killed instead.

Tasic is charged, together with former fighters Predrag Milisavljevic and Milos Pantelic, with participating in the murder of several dozen Bosniaks and the forced transfer of more than 500 Bosniak civilians from Visegrad between April and June 1992.

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

Omerovic said that she did not see Tasic at the Isceric Hill, where the women and children were separated from the men.

Another witness who testified on Tuesday, Ajka Mujkic, recalled a conversation with Tasic, who said to tell her husband to appeal to villagers who were hiding in the woods to escape the fighters to agree to being evacuated “in order to end their suffering”.

Mujkic said that she later saw Tasic standing with some soldiers at the Isceric Hill.

She learned later that her husband was executed with other prisoners at the nearny Paklenik pit.

The trial is scheduled to resume on May 28.