Bratunac War Crimes Defendant ‘A Good Neighbour’

At the trial for crimes committed in Bratunac, the witness for the prosecution said that he saw defendant Savo Babic during his imprisonment in the Vuk Karadzic primary school, but that he never hit him or abused him.

The witness, Kemal Hodzic, told the court on Monday that on May 10, 1992, he was locked up together with his family and others from the village of Suha at the town stadium in Bratunac in eastern Bosnia.

“We were guarded at the stadium by members of paramilitary units… No one knew them. These were people from Serbia,” explained Hodzic.

He said he was then moved by truck with other men of combat age to the Vuk Karadzic primary school. In the school gymnasium, where 400 detainees were locked up, he said, three men suffocated, and there was physical abuse.

“A guard from Vranje [in Serbia] would come, call your name and you had to come out. When they took you out, you got beaten and abused. That’s how they killed [his neighbour] Medo Helic and his two sons,” explained Hodzic.

He said he was beaten by some of the guards, but not by defendant Babic when he came to the school.

The prosecution charges Babic, then commander of the military police in Bratunac, with ordering, committing and failing to prevent the imprisonment of non-Serb civilians in the school in May 1992.

Around 400 detained civilians were beaten and tortured every day, and several dozen were killed or died as a result of the conditions at the school, the indictment alleges.

Hodzic said that he was imprisoned in the school for three days and after that he was among those taken to be exchanged with Bosnian Serb detainees. Before he was exchanged, said Hodzic, the prisoners were taken to the town of Pale.

“That’s when I was beaten once again and I saw Savo Babic once more. He did not beat us or abuse us. He was only present when they were taking us to be exchanged, that’s all,” said the witness.

During cross-examination, Hodzic said that he knew the defendant before the war, and that he was a “good neighbour” to his relatives.

At the end of the session, Babic asked the witness whether he was certain that he saw him at the school in Bratunac.

“I did, I saw you, and that’s the truth. I cannot say what did not happen,” Hodzic responded.

The trial is set to resume on June 3.