Indictee Protected a Family

Witness Sefik Karupovic said that, while he was hiding in the woods on July 23, 1992, he heard his youngest son calling his name out.
 
“My son was shouting that Drago had come in order to take us somewhere,” the witness said, adding that Drago was actually his neighbour Dragomir Soldat, whom he knew very well.
 
Karupovic said that Soldat told them to take some food and that he was “taking us to a safe place”.
 
“He put my wife, my three kids and I into a white Mercedes and drove us to a house in Zeger, near Carakovo. He left us in that house,” the witness said.
 
As he said, some soldiers, who called indictee Soldat by the nickname Cica, were present in the house as well.
 
“After having brought us to the house, he got into his car and drove away, along with the soldiers. Some soldiers even had to sit on the car hood, as there were many of them. I do not know where they went to,” the witness explained.
 
According to his testimony, other soldiers later came to the house. When they heard that Soldat had evacuated his family, they were mad.
 
“They were cursing. He probably had some army rank, because those soldiers did not dare harm us,” the witness said.
 
Karupovic told the Court that Soldat came back later that same day and told them that he had to take them somewhere else, because they were no longer safe in the house. The indictee then drove them to Prijedor.
 
“Some time later I was taken to Trnopolje detention camp, where I met Sead Susic, who told me about the shooting in front of the mosque in Carakovo, adding that Cica participated in it. I told him I supposed that Dragomir Soldar was the man nicknamed Cica,” the witness said.
 
According to the charges, on July 23, 1992 Zoran Babic and Velemir Djuric, who were accompanied by other individuals known to them, took male residents from their houses in Carakovo village, as per an order issued by Dragomir Soldat, took them to the local mosque and shot them.
 
The indictment alleges that some of the men, who survived the shooting, died after indictees Djuric and Babic had set the mosque on fire, because burning parts of the mosque fell down on their bodies.
 
Protected witness S-2 said that he father was taken from their house on July 23, 1992 and shot in front of the mosque. She described what she saw, when she went to the mosque in order to check what had happened to the men.
 
“I looked at my father. Blood was pouring out of his head. I ran back home, crying,” witness S-2 said, adding that they buried her father’s body and that women and children were transported to Trnopolje by bus seven days later.
 
The trial is due to continue on June 14.