Bosniak Villager ‘Imprisoned in Container and Assaulted’

Prosecution witness Uzeir Cakar told the court on Tuesday that he was assaulted by defendant Milos Pantelic while he was being held prisoner in the container in the village of Donja Lijeska near Visegrad in 1992.

“Milos Pantelic entered the room, where I was held along with other men, cursed my mother and began beating me. He slapped me two or three times. My lip was cut, so blood began pouring from it,” Cakar said.

The witness said that another fighter, Nenad Tanaskovic, brought him to the container; Tanaskovic was sentenced to 12 years in prison in 2006 for war crimes in Visegrad.

“Pantelic and Tanaskovic told the soldiers to hand me over to them and that they would take me to a meadow and kill me,” Cakar said.

Pantelic is charged, together with former fighters Predrag Milisavljevic and Ljupko Tasic, with with having participated in the murders, forced resettlement, detention, torture and other inhumane acts of Bosniaks 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.

Another witness, Kadija Kasapovic, president of the Visegrad 92 association which represents families of wartime missing people, testified that relatives of victims had told her that defendant Tasic organised a convoy which was supposed to evacuate Bosniaks from the Dobrun neighbourhood of Visegrad, but instead the men were separated from the women and killed.

“I found out from family members’ statements that they were killed on June 15, 1992 and that one of them survived. Their bodies were exhumed and buried at Vlakovo cemetery in 2001,” Kasapovic said.

The trial is due to continue on July 16.